ESPN and Twitter have teamed up in a brilliant, yet delayed, move to with ESPN that will stream instant replays of college football bowl games via Tweets. Ford will also play the role of main sponsor during the partnership which start on Dec. 18th and run until a week after the college football season ends.
The partnership is a no-brainer and a great move for all parties involved. ESPN will be able to extend their brand and gain a little “street cred” for finally embracing social media. Twitter will be able to take another step towards being a true media company and establish even more if a lead over Facebook in their prominent role in real-time sports. Lastly, Ford will get a chance to advertise with some incredibly clunky and annoying pre-roll clips.
Throughout games, the @ESPNCFB account will tweet out top plays with pre-roll clips promoting the Ford Fusion that Twitter users will be able to view on desktop, tablets or smartphones. ESPN will determine the length of the clips, but a Twitter representative said they would not run longer than 30 seconds and each will feature one five- to eight-second pre-roll from Ford.
ESPN and Ford also will run Promoted Tweets to expand the content’s reach, so that should Alabama intercept Notre Dame QB Everett Gholston during the BCS title game to seal the championship, the brands could conceivably promote the play in front of Twitter users in Alabama, those who follow former Alabama QB A.J. McCarron or those who incessantly tweet “Roll Tide.” ESPN and Ford could also take advantage of the newly launched ad-matching option that surfaces Promoted Tweets alongside searches for trending topics.
