Sprite NBA Partnership

Sprite has enjoyed a long standing partnership with The National Basketball Association (NBA), which appeals to the primary target audience of African American teens. In the past, the partnership has revolved around TV sponsorship and integration, but Sprite wanted to reinvigorate the sponsorship and drive sales.

African-American teens continue to be passionate about the NBA, and aspire to be part of the glitzy, showboating lifestyle they see lived out by NBA stars. Sprite decided to reorient its NBA partnership from TV to new digital platforms - video games, online video, and mobile.

As the long standing partner of the Slam NBA Dunk Contest TV broadcast, Sprite worked with the NBA to put consumers in control of the event. First of all they were given power to vote for the winner of the contest, either online or via text. The call-to-vote was pushed on TV and online. People were invited to discuss the event on the NBA page of Facebook.

On the night of the event, consumers were reminded of the text-to-vote opportunity via Sprite crawls, TNT announcers, on-screen graphics, billboards and custom TV creative. Toward the end of the broadcast there was a five-minute voting window. The results were then announced live on-air at the end of the broadcast. To continue the action all year long, Sprite infiltrated NBA licensed video games (NBA 2K8, NBA Live 08 and NBA Street), creating an exclusive new game feature, the Sprite Slam Dunk Contest, where the virtual players competed in the famous Sprite NBA event.