Exec talks making docuseries versus sponsoring one

Most sports content tends to have a revenue proposition built in. From live sports games to documentaries and docuseries to theatrical films, broadcasters are trying to recoup what they’ve invested in content, whether that’s with straight advertising, presenting sponsors, subscriptions to ad-free streaming platforms, theatrical ticket sales, or more. But it’s fascinating to see one particular advertiser decide “Rather than sponsor a docuseries, we’re going to make our own.”

That’s what men’s grooming brand Duke Cannon Supply Co. is doing with their new O-LINE docuseries. They have five 10-minute episodes planned here, with each covering a different NCAA offensive lineman.

Three of those episodes have already been released, covering Alabama Crimson Tide guard Tyler Booker, Notre Dame Fighting Irish guard Rocco Spindler, and Texas Longhorns tackle Kelvin Banks Jr. Two more are coming in the next two weeks, covering Arkansas Razorbacks center Addison Nichols and Clemson Tigers tackle Tristan Leigh. Recently, Duke Cannon vice-president (marketing) Devin O’Brien spoke to AA on this, saying an offensive line series was a natural fit for their brand.

“Duke Cannon is a brand that’s for hard-working men, and we try to do things that honor hard work in all its forms in everything we do to really honor our customer and what he’s all about and the virtues that he represents,” O’Brien said. “And the offensive line is a position unlike any in sports, and it really is the one that embodies those virtues most of all in my opinion. And so, this approach and this content series and letting these guys talk about the position and what it means to be an offensive lineman just felt like the best way to do it.”

O’Brien said he drew some inspiration from watching the positionally-focused Netflix/NFL Films/Omaha Productions docuseries Quarterback and Receiver .

“I don’t think it hurt that the last two years I’ve seen Quarterback and Receiver on Netflix. And I thought ‘You know what, there’s one position that deserves the glory and gets absolutely none of it, and that’s the offensive line.'”

But it’s certainly interesting to see a brand take this approach to creating a docuseries themselves on YouTube (a notable and growing platform for doc content) rather than sponsoring a docuseries from a more traditional broadcaster. O’Brien said Duke Cannon has always embraced content creation in their marketing, though, and that’s what’s helped them break into their market.

“As a brand, we’re a challenger brand in the category. We launched in 2012. The origin story is that the category was really an embarrassment to guys. There was teenage body sprays and then there were beauty brands that were overpriced and a little out of reach for most hard-working guys. We wanted to solve that problem.

“And the way we did communicate our point of view was by creating content. You can go way back on YouTube or Instagram and see that we’ve been a brand that’s always created content. We’ve had a small internal team and really worked hard to connect in a very authentic way with our community of good dudes. And I think what’s new here is us venturing into sports-specific content in this way.”

O’Brien said the length and scale here is beyond anything they’ve done to date, but it builds off that history.

“In many ways, we’re building off a long history of being a creative brand that makes content. This is a new frontier for us. But we got our start in sports by partnering with what’s famous in Minnesota, which is the All-Hockey Hair Team, a selection of the players with the best hair in Minnesota. So we started there because it made it a lot of sense, hockey, we’re a brand that’s based in Minnesota.”

Here’s the 2024 video of that team from Pulltab Sports, sponsored by Duke Cannon. (The team is its own fascinating advertising story, which Scott Cacciola dove into for The New York Times this spring.)

O’Brien said scaling up to their own docuseries with 10-minute episodes featuring NCAA players is a new step, and one he’s excited to keep building on.

“Content creation has been what Duke Cannon’s been about from the beginning. And as we’ve grown, as we’ve gotten bigger, it just provides us more opportunities to do it with some bigger names and bigger partners, which  is really exciting, and I think is absolutely something we’ll continue.”

And he said it was crucial for the brand to make this series themselves to showcase their values rather than sponsoring it from someone else.

“We’re a brand with a point of view,” O’Brien said. “And that point of view really is, as I’ve said before, that we are for hard-working men, and specifically men of substance and virtue. And I think it’s very important to those guys to know that the things we talk about and partner with are very real, and that it’s authentic, and what we’re about.

“So the fact that this content series is not just something we sponsored, but it’s something coming from the brand, I think is a very clear articulation to guys out there of what we’re all about. And hopefully they get it. And we are about the o-line in a very big way. It’s not something someone pitched to us.”

There are plenty of advertisers making their own videos with various sponsored athletes, but those are often 30- or 60-second commercials, or a couple of minutes that are intended primarily for consumption on social media. 10-minute docuseries episodes set for YouTube and Duke Cannon’s own website are different, especially with these involving on-location shooting and not just the athletes talking in one static interview. O’Brien said they needed that kind of format to really let these players shine.

“It was about what would give us a longer form—it’s not an hour, it’s about 10 minutes per episode—but giving it time and space and not confining this to just a social clip and how short that is and letting these guys take the stage and talk about what made them who they are and how they got to be to where they’re at and their motivations and values. It just felt like this was the only way to do that.

“If you reduce it down to a tweet or an individual TikTok clip or something, you don’t get the whole story. Plus, the o-line is a position you’ve got to use your brain a bit. These are smart guys; they’re thinkers, and they actually have a lot to say.”

For O-LINE , O’Brien said it was important for them not just to work with top players, but people who felt similarly about the importance of hard work in offensive line play. And he said it wound up working out remarkably well, with the players they had in mind being interested in the concept.

“On our roster, we have some of the best offensive linemen in college football today. But also, it was really important to us that these were guys who shared our point of view about the position and were excited about the project. I think there’s a little bit of serendipity in the whole process about the guys we had in mind we felt would be a good fit for this, they were also excited about the project.”

O’Brien said that level of buy-in was key to making this work as a docuseries.

“That was really important, that these guys were equally invested. And it sort of speaks to the humility and the selflessness of the guys who play o-line; they’re excited about advancing the position, and notoriety for the position, not as much as themselves. The five guys who said yes to this were just perfect, and they were all really excited about the concept; it didn’t take much convincing.”

The series, which has already received more than 120,000 views just on YouTube for each of its first two episodes (and more than 56,000 for its most-recent third episode), features two tackles, two guards, and a center, or a full offensive line. O’Brien said it was crucial for them to show all positions, not just grab five offensive linemen.

“That was intentional. We wanted the full o-line represented. And one of the coolest things about the o-line is that it’s a position that’s a unit. A guard is not just a guard, a guard is a member of a five-man team all working together in sync. They are choreographed in their movements and how they approach playing football every single play.

“But having each of those positions represented was important to start bringing out some of the nuances. The mentality of a center is very different than a tackle. And seeing that play out in the way that these guys talk and the things that they think about was really neat.”

It’s fitting that the first episode released was on Alabama guard Booker, as O’Brien said Booker’s past comments about walking back to the Crimson Tide football facility after games so he can interact with fans were a key part of what led to this specific project.

“Tyler inspired this project in a big way. I’d been thinking about it for about a year, doing something on the o-line, but I read a story last year on Tyler walking home to the Alabama facility after games with the fans. And I just thought, well, first of all, this is a young man who’s incredibly humble and aware of himself and just a standup guy, it’s a very likeable thing that he was doing.

“But also, it just reaffirmed for me that there’s some o-line stories that really need to be told. And that was the inertia that really set things in motion in making this happen, specifically that story about Tyler. He was one of the first guys we reached out to, and his first response was ‘If we’re going to do this, I want to do it back home in New Haven, Connecticut.’

“And so we met him in New Haven, because he wanted to lift up his community and the people he grew up with, which is, again, every one of these guys did not disappoint when it came to being people that live the virtues and values as part of what we see it means to be an offensive lineman.”

While the offensive line still may be underrecognized compared to quarterbacks and receivers, there’s unquestionably some increased notability for linemen recently. That includes Prime Video’s documentary on Jason Kelce (who’s also continued with his New Heights podcast with brother Travis, and is now a prominent ESPN analyst as well), Andrew Whitworth’s work on Thursday Night Football , Mike Golic Jr.’s daily show with his dad (plus his college football broadcasting schedule), and more. O’Brien said he’s noticed that increased attention, and he’s optimistic O-LINE can fit into that, but he thinks there’s still more that can be done to spotlight these players.

“Hopefully we’re a part of that by platforming these guys. It’s been a really fun project. I’ll say this, though; it’s still not enough. They are the heroes of the gridiron. I saw a post on Twitter the other day, it was like ‘O-linemen don’t have stats.’ Which is kind of an interesting thing to think about. But they do have pancake blocks, and that counts for something.”

O’Brien said offensive linemen also fit into Duke Cannon’s overall approach on people they want to work with and support, which includes military veterans.

“Something that’s been a big part of Duke Cannon’s heritage is that we’ve always given back to veterans’ causes. We’ve since formalized that by way of t he Duke Cannon Veteran Fund . And we give to causes that are specifically focused on helping veterans transition from active duty to civilian life.

“So just like this content series being a way that we can put our point of view into the world, we like to invest in these things as well, in helping hard-working men and women from the military make it successfully as civilians. We’ve always thought of the military community as the shining star, North Star, of what it means to be a hard-working, selfless good dude.”

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The college sports world has seen massive changes in recent years from the name, image, and likeness era, and part of that allows brands like Duke Cannon to sponsor NCAA athletes in a way they couldn’t before. O’Brien said college athletes are often great fits for the Duke Cannon brand, so he’s thrilled the NIL era makes that possible.

“It’s a pretty neat space. I think especially working with a NCAA athlete, they’re excited and eager to do things. There’s not as much red tape to work through. As a marketer, brand partner, it can be really fun and inspiring.”

He said they’ve previously worked with college offensive linemen on smaller-scale campaigns, which helped pave the way for this docuseries.

“We got started a couple years ago working with some offensive lineman at Michigan, including [Browns’ guard] Zak Zinter, who was just a great young guy. It was such a joy to work with him. And that got the ball rolling at Duke Cannon of ‘Hey, this could be a space where we partner with linemen in college football.'”

O’Brien said college football’s popularity makes it an appealing sector for them, in addition to the ease of working with the players.

“Everyone loves college football, it’s just a fun place to be,” he said. “It’s inspiring and exciting, very much so, just because of the attitude of these guys in the early stages of their career.”

And he said working with college athletes also is appealing for a brand that has college-age men in mind as one key demographic.

“Certainly, reaching young men is like the Holy Grail of marketing, especially when you’re a men’s grooming brand like we are. And that’s a big part of it. But I do see all of these guys as people with reach and audience far beyond the college demo.

“But absolutely, it is a good way in for authentic connection with college-age men and college football and back to college. The Super Bowl of men’s grooming is back to college, to some extent. So it’s a nice overlap.”

The first three episodes of O-LINE are out now on Duke Cannon’s website and YouTube channel , with two further ones to follow in the next two weeks.

The post Duke Cannon creates ‘O-LINE’ docuseries featuring college football stars appeared first on Awful Announcing .