Ford, Nissan and State Farm are embedding their brands in sports as they chase fandoms

It’s set to air Bronco Off Course, a show in which golfers scramble between custom holes scattered across a remote valley in the Mojave desert using the latest Ford Bronco as their off-road caddy, later this month.

“It really is a different way to bring attention to Bronco as a brand and show it in a different light that might seem unexpected, but yet is totally authentic to what Bronco is and does,” Michael Levine, director of North America product communications at Ford, told Digiday.

The show features golf creators among its cast and stars professional drift racer Vaughn Gittin Jr, whose company RTR created the show’s pilot. “We just thought about doing the coolest shit that we can do with Broncos, with authentic golfers, and [knew] that the audience would be attracted to it,” said Levine.

It’s an attempt to dial into a community of younger golf fans with more interest in watching the sport on YouTube than via the PGA Tour, as well as to recruit drivers curious about recreational off-roading into the Ford Bronco orbit.

“You’ve got this really big, fast-growing cohort of 18-to-34-year-olds that are big into golf and golf experiences. We saw it as an opportunity to mash up enthusiasm for off-road as well,” said Levine, who declined to share the budget Ford put aside for the show’s production. 

Entertainment content, whether in the form of branded motorsports TV shows, organic social work or brand-owned podcasts and YouTube documentaries, can help advertisers stand out. According to a survey of 16,000 U.S. consumers published by indie agency Small World and brand tracking firm Tracksuit, 83% of the brands considered “most entertaining” increased their revenue last year.

Nissan developed a similar project with PLN in February. The carmaker staged jiu-jitsu exhibition matches inside the latest Magnite model (to demonstrate its roominess) for the channel’s CarJitsu show.

Derek Green, chief creative officer at TBWARAAD (Nissan is a global account for the network), said the company had pursued the idea as a way of reaching younger car buyers that might ignore typical automotive advertising.

For both auto brands, the shows will also provide a rich bank of video content for clipping on social media platforms. Though CarJitsu is certainly outlandish – in one clip, a competitor uses the Magnite’s seatbelt to render his opponent unconscious – Green said it was intended to burst through consumers’ For You feeds. 

“People are seeing AI slop on the internet, they’re doomscrolling and they’re bored,” he said, before adding that the show could provide “something that actually gets them excited again.”

Insurer State Farm, already a serial user of co-branded TV ads, has been working with Netflix to secure a cameo appearance for its brand mascot, Jake from State Farm, in basketball show Running Point.

For State Farm CMO Alyson Griffin, the show is “at the intersection of where we actually really live in real life: sports culture, basketball and entertainment,” she said. As such, it’s an opportunity to reinforce the brand mascot’s profile as “the personification of what it means to be a good neighbor… and not just a mascot that interrupts a show.” Running Point’s star Kate Hudson also appears in an ad set to run across Reddit, Netflix, Peacock, and YouTube spots.

Advertisers know that even niche or extreme sports can provide a means of reaching large, engaged audiences. And marketers believe that creative output that puts them in a leading role, rather than merely as a sponsor of a league or club, stands a better chance of connecting with those viewers.

“They’re not trying to get into culture… they are culture,” said Bennie Reed, co-founder of indie creative agency This Will Be Good.

It’s not the first time that advertisers have attempted to use branded content as a vehicle to boost brand awareness or bolster consumer loyalty, but recently there’s been an uptick in such investments. Gap recently hired a chief entertainment officer, for example, while Havas acquired German “cultural marketing” firm Styleheads last month.

According to Stephen Mayback, strategy director at Ogilvy, changing consumption habits on social platforms and the gradual shift towards algorithmic feeds is prompting a rethink among marketers.

“It’s a new playground for brands on social. So we get to be really imaginative with what we’re delivering,” said Mayback.

Media Futures Group, a bespoke unit created by WPP for Google, recently shot a documentary series taking viewers inside the fan experience at major English soccer clubs for Google Pixel.

Though Google and State Farm are each also sponsors of several sports leagues and teams, Small World co-founder Dan Salkey argued that branded content work might provide brands a way into sports fandoms that didn’t carry the typically large price tag of a jersey deal. “You shouldn’t inherently feel that that means going and paying millions of pounds to sponsor a team,” he said. “You can activate sport in an entertainment-first way… [it] is very different to traditional sports sponsorship.”

Such techniques are, by their nature, difficult to compare with performance-oriented channels. Levine said that Ford expects to measure Off Course’s success in social impressions and views. “Primarily [success] is going to be about getting some nice traction with the videos,” he said.

Griffin argued that branded content and in-show placements stood a chance of reaching a broader swathe of an advertiser’s target audience. 

Paid ads on streaming platforms, for example, wouldn’t reach those willing to sign up to higher subscription tiers, she said: “Your brand shows up whether that spot is still being paid to run or not, [that] it is, to me, extremely valuable.”

Though such content might ultimately be distributed on social platforms, Reed argued against comparing its performance with paid inventory on TikTok or Meta’s apps. “You have to have faith in the world of big brand building,” he said.

The crew behind Ford’s off-road golf show made a similar argument. “While I know at the end of the day the goal is to sell Broncos,” said Gittin Jr, “my end of day is having fun and making sure others are having fun and curating an experience that is inspiring.”