What I'd Pitch Lexus For The Miami Dolphins

👋 Welcome back to Sponcon Sports, a weekly newsletter dedicated to sponsored content strategy in the sports industry!

More professional sports teams should take a page from college athletics' social media playbook—specifically, by creating content designed for players' channels.

The Minnesota Vikings nailed this approach during their Winter Warrior Alternate Uniform reveal in June. Not only did they produce a hero video, but they also crafted custom video assets for nine players, including Justin Jefferson, Aaron Jones, Harrison Smith, and Christian Darrisaw. While two players only posted static images, the strategy still paid off.

By giving players personalized content, the Vikings encouraged them to share the announcement on their own channels, which helped the team tap into new audiences. This is especially important as younger fans tend to follow players more closely than teams.

The results on Instagram speak for themselves:

• The hero video racked up 2.8 million views and 193.2K engagements (7.0% engagement rate).

• Player posts (11 in total) from the uniform shoot garnered 1.8 million views and 250.8K engagements (13.9% engagement rate).

Sharing custom content with players added 64% more total views and 130% more engagements to the campaign. Interestingly, 56% of the players' views and 57% of their engagements came from Jefferson, the team's star wide receiver, who actually has more Instagram followers than the Vikings’ official account (1.7 million vs. 1.4 million).

But this isn't just about star power. The six players who posted custom videos as Reels averaged 135.2K views, with engagement rates ranging from 8.7% (Jones) to 33.6% (Joshua Metellus).

While this activation wasn't sponsored, it's a solid blueprint for future sponsored campaigns, like jersey patch partners or uniform reveals, especially if player deals are in place to attract even more attention from new audiences.

In Today’s Edition:

• Partnership Ideas For The Auto Category 🚘️

• The Royals’ Big Q Celly 💧

• Topps Notch Sponcon From MLB 🃏 

🏊️ DEEP DIVE
What I'd Pitch Lexus For The Miami Dolphins

What I’d Pitch is back! This week, we’re diving into bottom-of-funnel strategies.

I was asked to share how I’d generate qualified leads and test drives for an auto brand in a pitch from the Miami Dolphins. Given that Lexus is a current partner of the Dolphins, we’ll focus on them.

REMINDER: If you’d like to see what I’d pitch for a sports rightsholder and brand of your choice, submit your request here to be featured in an upcoming edition of Sponcon Sports. Submissions will remain anonymous.

Dolphins x Lexus Partnership Overview

Lexus is the Official Luxury Vehicle of the Miami Dolphins and Hard Rock Stadium.

This partnership includes naming rights to the Lexus North Sideline Club, a premier seating area with access to an air-conditioned club, as well as sponsorship of scoring drive and stat graphics.

Lexus also supports the Dolphins Challenge Cancer initiative.

Lead Generation Strategy

Our goal is to generate qualified leads for Lexus by creating face-to-face opportunities between their sales team and Dolphins fans and showcasing how being a Lexus customer enhances the fan experience.

Face Time with Lexus

Lexus will become the presenting sponsor of road game watch parties.

These events will feature all the usual festivities—food, drinks, giveaways, live entertainment, alumni appearances, and family-friendly games—plus Lexus vehicles on-site.

At a high level, the term “road” ties in perfectly with the Lexus brand. More importantly, these watch parties provide an opportunity for the Lexus sales team to connect with Dolphins fans in person, allowing them to build relationships and trust. Fans can also see, touch, and even test drive the cars.

This approach is key since we know people don’t buy or lease cars on a whim; it takes time and research.

The fans also win with this tactic as we’re giving them more chances to fuel their fandom with their community outside their allotted eight home games.

How It Works

The number of watch parties can be scaled based on budget.

If hosting a party for every road game isn’t feasible, we should target games with the least competition, considering the growing trend of fans watching multiple games at home through services like NFL RedZone, Sunday Ticket, or YouTube TV’s Multi-view. We’ll also avoid weeks 12-17, where games could be flexed out of their scheduled time slots.

Two road game options remain:

• Week 3 vs. New England Patriots (4:05 pm): A divisional rivalry in the late afternoon window (1 of 5 games, versus 1 of 7 in the early window). It’s also the first road game of the season.

• Week 10 vs. Los Angeles Rams (8:15 pm): A Monday Night Football standalone, national game.

Week 17 (Sunday Night at Cleveland) and Week 18 (at New York Jets) could also be options depending on the success of these earlier events. The same goes for any playoff road games.

Event Locations

• Local Lexus Dealership: Hosting the watch party at a Lexus dealership (e.g. Lexus of North Miami) gives the sales team a home-field advantage, allowing fans to explore the entire inventory and even test drive cars during game breaks.

• Hard Rock Stadium: If a dealership isn’t an option, host the party in the parking lot of Hard Rock Stadium. Fans may feel more comfortable here, though costs could be higher. You could also bring select Lexus cars to the stadium, setting up a test drive area in the parking lot. If the parking lot isn’t feasible, the event can be held inside the stadium, though test drives wouldn’t be possible.

Plus Up - Collaborate with Heineken, another Dolphins sponsor, to help fund the series. This would be a great opportunity to feature Heineken 0.0, reinforcing the message that fans shouldn’t drink and drive.

Get More with Lexus

We want to create a sense of FOMO, showing how being a Lexus customer can enhance the Dolphins fan experience. This can be achieved at home games, online, and at participating Lexus dealerships.

Home Games

Enhance the parking experience by offering Lexus customers a discount or access to an exclusive “Lexus Lot” closer to the stadium. As a Hard Rock Stadium partner, Lexus could even create a Fast Lane for quicker entry or a lane that gets you out faster.

Online

Run a sweepstakes offering a VIP experience at an upcoming home game. The package includes tickets to the Lexus North Sideline Club, free parking, and possibly pregame sideline passes. Lexus customers get a second chance to win by entering their Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on the form.

• Examples: Chicago Bulls x American Express – Bulls Drops, Los Angeles Chargers x American Airlines – Chargers Perks

You can create even more valuable data from submissions by asking entrants to select their favorite of four Lexus vehicle features.

By pinpointing these fans, the Dolphins can tailor future paid campaigns with specific Lexus offers and messaging, enhancing the overall fan experience. Conversely, if Lexus wants to target new customers, they can exclude VIN submittors from campaigns.

This sweepstakes can run multiple times per season (1-4x) and should be promoted via paid social media, email, SMS, and mobile app (including push notifications).

Dealerships

Run a paid social media campaign on team channels, offering prizes such as tickets or merchandise when fans test drive Lexus vehicles at participating dealerships.

The same offer would appear on signage in dealerships.

After a test drive, fans can scan a QR code provided by their salesperson to access a prize wheel instant-win sweepstakes. Every fan wins something.

Prizes should be easy to fulfill, such as e-gift cards to the team store, unisex merchandise (belt bags, hats, team-branded license plate covers/flags), and game tickets. Lexus can also support this with paid media on their channels given their rights to logos and marks.

Lexus also can provide perks for their customers who are also Dolphins season ticket members perks like priority booking or reduced costs of routine services (oil change, tire rotation, etc).

Have Your Pitch Brought To Life

Keep the What I’d Pitch series going by submitting your request here.

🔍 SPONCONSPIRATION
Steal These Ideas

The Los Angeles Rams are making the most of preseason by miking up head coach Sean McVay for their Sofi Coach Cam, something he likely wouldn’t allow during an in-season game.

The Kansas City Royals and QuikTrip are shaking up the sports celebration scene with a fresh take on the classic Gatorade bath.

Talkin’ Yanks (from Jomboy Media) put a fun twist on trivia with their latest BeatBox challenge.

For anyone promoting FC25 or Madden 25 in partnership with Electronic Arts, you’ve got to see this creative spin on blind ranking from MLB and Topps.

The Boston Red Sox nailed it when they tailored their milestone graphics perfectly to their official job board partner, Monster.

Real Madrid and HP delivered some top-notch B2B sponcon to file away for future reference.

🚨 ICYMI
What To Watch For

Connected Carousels: I'm loving Slate Teams' new feature [not sponsored] that lets teams easily create connected Instagram carousels. It's a fantastic tool, perfect for integrations like this post I shared in January from Oklahoma State Softball and Monster Energy.

20-Frame Carousels: Speaking of carousels, all Instagram users can now add up to 20 photos to their carousel posts.

Trend Watch: Juventus FC broadcasted their last friendly live on YouTube and through Juventus Creator Lab content creators, resulting in 500,000 views—five times more than last year's event. Last month, BIG3 also found success by letting creators stream games live on their own channels.

PSG Anime: Paris Saint-Germain launched a new anime series, PSG Flame: A Reborn Journey following a boy rediscovering his passion for football after meeting the PSG team in Japan. The team put together an Instagram account, @psganimetales to support the launch.

LinkedIn Video: LinkedIn is getting even better for your B2B brand partners. The platform has added Videos For You, a new section in the feed that suggests videos to watch [h/t Lindsey Gamble].

Sends Per Reach Advice: With Instagram's Head, Adam Mosseri, discussing sends per reach more often, you need to check out this video from Nick Cicero. Lia Haberman does an excellent job explaining how we should approach creating shareable content on Instagram.