The ACC Builds Around Bobbleheads for College Football Kickoff

With the college sports landscape regularly shifting and schools realigning to meet increasingly competitive interests, the Atlantic Coast Conference has to focus on what it has that the others don’t.

Like Tar Heels, Demon Deacons, or giant oranges with eyes and appendages.

As the ACC enters the third year of its “ACCOMPLISH GREATNESS” campaign, the 18-school conference is still getting comfortable with 2024 newcomers, Southern Methodist, Stanford, and Cal, while learning its way around an NCAA settlement that allows schools to pay athletes directly. To give fans a sense of what the ACC looks like amid all of those changes, the conference’s creative partners at Wasserman worked with ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips to develop two spots using bobbleheads of school mascots and cheerleaders to highlight their athletic, academic, and cultural traditions.

“As we took a look at just the landscape, we recognized that we have something that they necessarily don’t, which is culturally iconic marks that extend far beyond sport,” said Danny Nunez, chief creative officer at Wasserman. “When you look at the [North Carolina] Tar Heel, when you look at a [Wake Forest] Demon Deacon or a Miami Hurricane, and when you look at brands and culture—especially from a merch, streetwear, or a fashion play—when they go to license NCAA schools to do edition collegiate drops, they’re using ACC marks, so as we started to identify that within the culture, we said, ‘Wait a minute, we have something really special here.’”

The latest installment of the campaign has given the bobbleheads the collective title of ACC ICONS. In the first spot, at a location “somewhere in the ACC,” a bobblehead of Clemson’s The Tiger has assembled a structure out of building blocks, textbooks, pizza boxes, and dorm furniture. Stanford’s mascot, The Tree, asks if it’s a house, and The Tiger responds that it’s a “powerhouse.”

By the second ad—”Reason For the Season”—Wake Forest’s Demon Deacon is cast as the orator he was born to play: Leading a discussion of why the ACC is great. While his “complete” list consists of one item—Wake Forest—the other bobbleheads chime in with ACC game days, football, basketball, “every sport, really,” a bicoastal footprint, attractiveness, smarts, and other attributes that quickly overwhelm the Deacon’s blackboard.

“This new evolution of our ‘ACCOMPLISH GREATNESS’ campaign strives to further strengthen the ACC’s national brand with increased visibility, relevance, and reputation,” said Martha Schwab, vp of creative strategy at the ACC: “The collection of schools in the ACC represents the best in college athletics, both on and off the field—and there is no shortage of greatness.”

As the ACC kicks off Week 1 of its football season with 16 games in five days, it plans to roll out these ads on linear television, digital, and social media—with school-specific assets for each of its markets that will debut throughout the year. Dan Rozier, ECD at Wasserman, noted that with 18 different characters involved, it was necessary to collaborate with the various ACC schools just to make sure each had the right share of voice and was satisfied with each mascot’s tone and demeanor.

As the ACC looks to define itself for a new generation of fans, its team of creative partners and schools have found their voice in wobbly resin and ceramic.

“The good thing about bobbleheads is that it was a little bit of a cheat code in that they are so expressive just by nature, and their faces are very distinct,” Rozier said. “What’s nice is that you look at the Syracuse [Otto the] Orange, and you’re like, ‘I know how this guy talks,’ and you look at the Duke Blue Devil, and you’re like, ‘I can hear the voice of this man.’”

On the clock

Nunez and his team initially pitched the idea behind the bobbleheads roughly 24 months ago, at the very beginning of the “ACCOMPLISH GREATNESS” campaign. Since that time, Wasserman has attended the ACC’s winter and spring meetings and presented the idea to the athletic directors of all 18 ACC schools, with Nunez and his colleagues standing in front of a screen listening to questions and concerns. 

After decades of various conference game day ads featuring football highlights laced into scenes of students in university labs staring intently at beakers, everyone involved knew the ACC needed more.

“If we want to be looked at differently, then we need to start acting, talking, and moving differently,” Nunez said.

But college sports are riddled with complications. Last year’s addition of three new schools brought three new voices into the conversation. The ACC’s existing members, meanwhile, come with their own unique sets of circumstances. While Notre Dame played in football’s national championship game last year, it can’t be featured in football-related ACC spots because it aligns with the conference in all sports but football, where it is an independent.

Rozier credits Wasserman’s team for sticking to a core storyline that made it easier to include newcomers and accommodate the needs of all existing ACC members.

“The team had this foundational creative: This is a family, let’s start there and watch it grow,” he said. “Families are competitive. They go head to head, but they ultimately love each other, and they’re with each other. That’s the deal—they’re going to be by each other’s side no matter what, even if they’re on opposite sides of the field, the court, or whatever.”