• by Aaron Baar , August 2, 2010

Only weeks after targeting the "tribes" of college football fans, EA Sports is embarking on a new marketing campaign to capture casual, lapsed and younger gamers for the granddaddy of sports titles, "Madden."

The new campaign, which introduces a tagline, "Madden to the People," depicts NFL pros surprising unsuspecting real fans with games and challenges to game play. Television commercials begin showing Super Bowl winning quarterback Drew Brees in Times Square challenging members of a crowd and passersby to play a "quick game of Madden."

Other scenarios show players such as Antonio Gates (of the San Diego Chargers) dropping in on a lapsed gamer and challenging him to a game and Luis Castillo (also of the Chargers) crashing an 11-year-old's birthday party.

"Madden has been the quintessential [sports] game to play," John Elder, president of San Francisco agency Heat, which created the campaign, tells Marketing Daily. "But as they've come up with new product improvements, it's also become more complex to play."

Those scenarios, as well as others featuring NFL players leading rival high school football teams against each other in online play and others dropping in at firehouses to play the game, will be shown in expanded form in online vignettes, Elder says.

The idea came from customer response for quicker game play as well as easier online play, Elder says. The agency worked with the company's customer tracking department to find fans who had sent in suggestions to cast the unsuspecting players in the commercials and vignettes. "We created a concept of, 'What if we showed people you could just pick up this game and play?'" he says. "The purpose of this campaign is to get people psyched up about Madden."

Earlier this month, EA and Heat created a campaign for the company's NCAA football game that featured customized spots for second-tier markets where college football was particularly important, such as Austin, Texas and the Southeastern U.S. Although they launch at the same time, creating a campaign for Madden was a decidedly different animal.

"They do launch close to each other," Elder says. "We start with what does it mean to be a fan of NCAA Football and how is that different from pro football? NCAA [football] is part of being a tribe. NFL fandom is more about the flash and the amazing plays."