• by Aaron Baar , February 4, 2016

The football season may be ending, but that only means the basketball season is heating up.

Spalding, maker of the official basketball of the NBA is launching a new campaign, looking to unite consumers behind the notion that the truly great have an uncompromising confidence to defeat the odds and obstacles. 

“The campaign is a movement designed to engage millennial athletes and fans around a common thread of inner confidence that enables achievement of your personal best,” Kenyatta Bynoe, Spalding’s senior director of marketing, tells Marketing Daily. “Through this campaign, we hope to inspire with emotional storytelling in a way that will build advocacy for our brand.”

Running with the hashtag #truebelievers, the campaign kicks off with NBA stars Damian Lillard and DeMar DeRozan talking about what makes them “True Believers.” In digital videos for the brand, both men are filmed practicing alone in black-and-white (save for an orange basketball) speaking about the challenges they faced and where they are now. 

DeRozan, for instance, speaks in a voiceover about his origins in Compton, and how “no one would have called him blessed” but for the belief of his grandmother. Now, he has nicknames such as “DeMarvelous,” “Super DeMario” and “D-Rex.” Onscreen text then reads: “DeMar earned his nickname. Will you?” Lillard, meanwhile, ticks off nicknames such as, “Dame-time,” “Ill-Lill” and “The Omen.” “I appreciate it,” Lillard says in a voiceover, “I always knew my name would stand for something.”

The campaign also lets fans in on the action with an online “Nickname Generator” through which consumers answer a few questions about their game (hardwood vs. blacktop, for instance) to arrive at a customized nickname, ready for sharing across social networks.

“It's an intuitive algorithm built to engage consumers around the notion of earning and owning a nickname that represents them in a fun and engaging way,” Bynoe says. 

To reach the target Millennial market, the campaign will be heavy on digital and social elements. In addition to the name generator, the brand will undertake a “highly coordinated” social media effort during the NBA All-Star Weekend, asking consumers to share their own content with an opportunity to win prizes, Bynoe says. In June, Spalding will also launch a three-part docu-series about the confidence and spirit that goes into making a True Believer. Those videos will be distributed on ABC and ESPN digital properties and social networks.

“We wanted to take a highly strategic approach in reaching our target audience by meeting them where they create, consume and share content,” Bynoe says. “With our campaign being built on a storytelling platform, the digital and social media space provides the perfect distribution channel to deliver our message.”