ESPN and Dos Equis are helping to blur the line between game time and advertising

ESPN’s Chris Fowler may find himself in an unusual position when he’s in the middle of calling one of the college football games scheduled to be broadcast on ABC or ESPN. Maybe he looks at a monitor during a commercial break and imagines himself talking to millions of viewers – even though the channel is playing nothing but commercials.

That’s because Fowler, known to sports fans for years as the host of ABC’s Saturday night college football games and host of ESPN’s long-running “College GameDay,” is an integral part of a new ad campaign from Heineken’s Dos Equis based on it Aims to achieve this Beer is a crucial part of the gaming experience. In addition to commercials featuring Fowler as a coach, Dos Equis has hosted a contest in which participants could be rewarded when teams “do dos” and attempt a two-point conversion.

“We saw a lot of that in some of the most-watched games of the season,” Fowler said in an interview.

Television networks have long experimented with blurring the lines between clips of popular shows and commercial breaks, as anyone who has seen a Subway sandwich be part of the dialogue on shows like NBC’s “Chuck” or “Hawaii Five-0” might do. from CBS was witnessed. But the current Dos Equis campaign is shining a spotlight on some of the new techniques media companies are testing to combine programs and pitches so that viewers don’t switch to other options.

“We want college football fans to feel like Dos Equis has deep roots in the sport. Therefore, it is crucial to be included in the live gaming experience, not only during commercial breaks, but also on the field,” says Jonnie Cahill, chief marketing officer at Heineken USA, in emailed comments. For example, during a recent broadcast of a college football game featuring the Georgia Bulldogs and the Alabama Crimson Tide, Dos Equis appeared not only during commercial breaks, but also in on-screen graphics as teams went for two-point converts during the game. “We love the way we integrate into the entire fan experience and tie it to the brand,” says Cahill.

Television companies have long tried to do things like this, but in the past the work was often “one-off” or something that was difficult to repeat or show multiple times. In 2010, for example, ABC ran commercials for Stouffer’s that featured cast members from shows like “Ugly Betty” and “The Middle” dining on Nestlé’s frozen entrees. More recently, Wells Fargo ran a campaign with Steve Martin and Martin Show, with commercials that appear to appear frequently in Hulu’s new cycle of “Only Murders in the Building,” which stars the two actors. However, the commercials seem to make the most sense when they are shown on shows that feature the characters played by the celebrities.

The new commercial featuring Fowler can air at many college football games and during general sports programming on ESPN and ABC and still have some contextual relevance to viewers. “We believe these spots will resonate with college football fans no matter where they run,” Cahill said.

It’s not enough to make well-known network faces available for ads. Fowler says he won’t participate in commercial campaigns unless he feels truly connected to the product being promoted. “I will enjoy it if the brand makes sense, if I like what it stands for, if the experience of making the commercial is nice. All of those things are super important,” Fowler says.

Disney puts a lot of emphasis on making sure its talent wants to participate in certain promotional efforts, says Christina Carey Dunleavy, vice president at Disney CreativeWorks, an in-house agency that helped produce the new Dos Equis commercial. The company “wants to make sure the talent involved believes in what they’re talking about,” she says.

The campaign’s emphasis on “getting started” appealed to Fowler. “The message aligns with what I believe in life – making bold decisions, listening to your inner voice, listening to your gut and striving for more,” he says. When Fowler first came to ESPN in 1986, he did so for a college sports highlight program called “Scholastic Sports America” — something that confused some of his acquaintances, he recalls. Some people told him, “It’s a small cable network. They are new. There’s no future in that,” he continues, “but it worked out well – not because I could see the future, but because it felt right at the moment.”

Disney expects more advertisers to consider similar concepts, says Carey Dunleavy, especially as more marketers see the value of alliances with so-called “influencers,” or enthusiasts who are able to relate to larger groups of fans or consumers. “I think you’ll see more,” she adds.