Toyota is the official sponsor of NBC Sunday Night Football. To show Toyota’s love of the game, the agency ran :45 films during the halftime show.

The concept was to seek out “the gutsiest” high school football teams across the nation. “Gutsy” being a very subjective term. A cross-country trek managed to unearth some truly unique and moving stories. To document the entire journey, a documentary filmmaker and crew were hired.

In this film, the featured team was entirely deaf.

Toyota sponsored the NBC Sunday Night Football halftime show. Instead of just airing a typical :30 spot during the show, we proposed the idea of running a long form video to run during the show, as opposed to a spot running in a bank of commercials. NBC agreed. During the show, the host actually did a throw introducing the video, and often, the halftime hosts commented on the video after it ran.

The concept was to seek out the “gutsiest” high school football teams across the nation. “Gutsy” being a very subjective term. A cross-country trek managed to unearth some truly unique and moving stories. To document the entire journey, a documentary filmmaker and crew were hired.What should have been a simple “commercial” media buy turned into an original segment during the NBC Sunday Night Football Halftime show.

1) 1% lift against commercial minute average (an additional 1.12 million viewers vs. commercials) 2) LOS average rating up by 2% 3) Press coverage with a total estimated value of $698,781, a 21% increase over 2007, and 886% increase over 2006.

4) In 2008, LOS A18-49 ratings indexed at 101 above the commercial minute average and 102 for M18-495) The A18-49 LOS average rating went up 2%6) The segment held viewers and outperformed the halftime norm +4% 7) Toyota scored highest rating of all automobile manufacturers in product placement in sports