NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Jan. 4, 2012) — Bridgestone Americas is teasing its new Bridgestone-brand advertising slogan — “Time to perform” — in ad vignettes and spoof documentary-style backgrounders posted on its Facebook and Youtube pages and via Twitter messages.
The company gave a glimpse of the ad campaign with a 60-second version of an ad aired during the Jan. 2 Bridgestone Winter Classic NHL hockey game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
The new advertising campaign, the work of Dallas-based Richards Group Inc., will break full time during Super Bowl XLVI on Feb. 5.
In a nutshell, the spot features Bridgestone engineers taking their passion for tire performance to the sports world, launching a line of “Bridgestone performance balls…and puck.”
In the ad, a Bridgestone engineer unveils a Bridgestone-branded football, basketball, soccer ball and hockey puck at a press conference in the lobby of what passes as Bridgestone's headquarters or technical center. The assembled “press corps” is less than overwhelmed; no one, not even effusive college basketball commentator Dick Vitale, can muster a single question.
The ad and the spoof backgrounders can be viewed at Bridgestone's Facebook and Youtube pages.
In the spoof backgrounders, Michelle Beadle, a sports reporter and co-host of ESPN's “SportsNation” and ABC-TV's “Winner's Bracket,” is the central figure in trying to figure out the “mystery” surrounding Bridgestone's new direction.
She appears in three vignettes, interacting with or interspersed with cuts of Mr. Vitale, Barry Melrose and Mike Milberg, NHL sportscasters, and Kenny Smith, former NBA player and basketball analyst.
The new ads will run parallel to the firm's global “Your Journey, Our Passion” slogan that debuted in early 2011 when Bridgestone Corp. updated its global corporate message and logo.
Prior to this, Bridgestone's brand message in North America has been “It's Bridgestone, or Nothing,” which debuted iny 2007.