Home Depot Built Its ESPN College GameDay Sponsorship to Last

A 20-year sponsorship of the college football preview show has overhauled the home improvement brand and flipped its marketing

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The Home Depot first sponsored ESPN’s College GameDay in 2003, when the majority of U.S. viewers watched broadcasts on bulbous cathode-ray tube televisions.

At the time, Home Depot centered around professionals and homeowners. It had offshoots like The Home Depot Supply, the Home Depot Landscape Supply and Expo Design Center aimed at a growing housing market and had stores so inhospitable to average shoppers that then-CEO Robert Nardelli admitted to CNN that “We’ve got to make our stores more shoppable, more navigable.”

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