At the time, animation was taking off with ESPN following its Toy Story alt-cast, which featured characters like Toy Story 4’s Duke Caboom during the halftime show.
From there, Wilson worked with David “Sparky” Sparrgrove, ESPN Creative Studio’s lead animator, to build the first ESPN-branded character. Eventually the one character grew into an entire family.
Part of the team’s challenge was to identify ESPN’s key fan segments for future growth, Wilson said.
“The characters are all intentionally very different from each other because the way people show up in fandom and ESPN across all our touch points is really different,” Wilson said. “Every time you see one of our characters, they’re going to be taking the experience that wasn’t super fan-friendly and turning it into something entertaining, engaging, and hopefully something that fans are going to look forward to due to the variety, the creative, and unexpected nature.”
More branded characters
The debut of the ESPN Squad comes after ESPN’s The Simpsons-themed telecast earlier this month, which took place during the NFL game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Dallas Cowboys.
In the future, fans can potentially expect to see the characters in co-branded creative pieces for ESPN’s ad partners, within its programming, on social, and on merchandise like t-shirts, sports gear, and other collectibles.
Brzezinski-Hsu said that the characters could have a larger place in content and with their ad partners in the future.
ESPN’s ties with Disney’s animated properties like Toy Story and The Simpsons means that there is already a built-in audience. But ESPN wants to test the waters and develop the characters before fully pushing the figures to fans. Social media backlash, for instance, can be harsh.
“We don’t want to be overly bold that this is going to resonate, but particularly, I think that’s why we’re starting in commercial, because there is more flexibility to introduce a new character in that space than there is in content as a whole,” Brzezinski-Hsu said.
