Dunkin' Donuts Taps YouTuber to Show NFL What Excessive Celebration Really Looks Like

A duck-duck-goose-inspired touchdown celebration at a National Football League game is something I'd pay good money to see. The NFL, of course, would never condone such a silly spectacle. But thanks to Hill Holliday's latest work for Dunkin' Donuts, we can enjoy kooky end-zone antics every week, as performed in web videos by YouTube star BdotAdot5 (aka, Brandon Armstrong of Atlanta). It's all part of Dunkin's recently renewed multi-season sponsorship of the "Field Pass" segments that air during ESPN's Monday Night Countdown. That program, one of ESPN's most popular shows, precedes NFL game telecasts on the cable network. Built around the #DDFieldPass hashtag, the campaign launches during tonight's Countdown program, and will run through NFL Wild Card weekend in January. Each week, Bdot will create at least one "excessive celebration" video focused on the fun side of football culture. The clips will be distributed across Dunkin' and Bdot's social channels, and promoted during the Countdown show, and via ESPN's Snapchat account and other digital assets. Also, a dedicated site is in the works to house the video content. "The NFL has a tendency to take the game very seriously, notably penalizing players for 'excessive celebrations' on the field, to the degree that among some of its fan base it has earned the title the 'No Fun League,' " says Hill Holliday creative director Khari Streeter. The Bdot videos, he says, are designed to poke some good-natured fun at what some perceive as the league's uptight attitude and tap into Bdot's youthful, sports-minded audience. (Several of his YouTube clips, lampooning the on-court styles of James Harden, Joey Crawford and other NBA stars, have amassed 1 million views apiece.) Bdot's first Dunkin' segment, "Goose," is bird-themed, and will, appropriately enough, drop during Monday's Falcons-Eagles game, the first segment of an ESPN Monday Night Football doubleheader: [jwplayer Vnz5d2Yz-1kT9Z8rj] Bdot returns during tonight's second game, between the Vikings and 49ers, with another clip, shown below, which is clearly designed to make some waves: [jwplayer 2hrTdHmV-1kT9Z8rj] Dunkin' will also leverage ESPN's Periscope presence as part of the campaign. Fans will be prompted on ESPN and Dunkin' social channels to tweet questions and messages using the #DDFieldPass tag, and network talent like Trent Dilfer, Ray Lewis and Steve Young will respond on ESPN's Periscope channel during the game. Those hosts also appear on a new "#DDFieldPass" video segment that will run through the season on ESPN.com, with Bdot content in the pre-rolls. Overall, the multimedia approach is designed to extend Dunkin's "presence and conversation with the fans" beyond the reach of traditional TV and online buys, said Chris D'Amico, Hill Holliday group creative director. "We will be working with ESPN to involve BDotADot as part of the Periscope at points during the season," added Scott Hudler, Dunkin's vp of global consumer engagement. Such a development would no doubt give the artiste added cause for excessive celebration. Below, BdotAdot5 fields some Adweek questions. Like all talented, right-thinking people, he's a Patriots fan. Why team up with Dunkin' for the campaign? Dunkin' Donuts is a very established organization and a place I've been eating since I was a kid. They came to me with the idea, and I didn't think twice about it. I knew I could do what they asked and make it 10 times as funny! Have you worked for any other brands? I haven't done any bigger projects outside of Dunkin' Donuts just yet, but I do have a lot of things planned in the very near future. Describe your creative process. Where do you draw ideas from when creating videos? My creative process is just me being me. I'm a sports fanatic, so I pretty much know about all major sports. I may go on YouTube and look at some videos pertaining to different players and different sports. But overall it's just me being me. What are some NFL topics you hope to tackle in Dunkin' videos? Viral videos! Moments in the NFL that I could recreate with a comical twist, player impersonations, Bill Belichick interviews, etc. There's a lot I could do with Dunkin' and the NFL. I think of you as mainly a hoops guy. You're into the NFL, too? I love the NFL. I've been a Patriots fan since '99. During that Pete Carroll era and ever since, I've been rocking with them hard!

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Dunkin' Donuts Taps YouTuber to Show NFL What Excessive Celebration Really Looks Like

Brand returns to ESPN's Monday Night Countdown

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