ESPN taps Noah Kahan to pull younger viewers to the Masters

The Masters Tournament is played down south in Augusta, Georgia, but this year, the golf championship is getting a bit of a northern attitude.

For the past six years, ESPN has promoted its broadcast coverage of the Masters by creating ads set to covers of Ray Charles’s “Georgia on My Mind” performed by modern artists like Leon Bridges and Kane Brown. In past years, the network has gone with singers with ties to the South (Bridges is from Atlanta, and Brown is from Chattanooga), but this year, ESPN looked up to Vermont native Noah Kahan to sing the song.

Between his talent, love of golf, and the “sense of place” conveyed through his music, Kahan was a natural fit for the campaign, according to Rachel Epstein, ESPN’s VP of live sports and audience expansion. Plus, Kahan has currency among younger audiences, and while ESPN wants to keep the history of the Masters front and center, the network is also aiming to grow the audience for the tournament to include a more diverse group than the traditional golf audience, she said.

“We’re always going to be fairly traditional and reverent in terms of how we visually showcase the tournament,” Epstein told Marketing Brew. “But just knowing that the Masters—certainly Augusta National and ESPN—are constantly looking to engage and reach younger audiences, music just felt like this important and powerful device that we could use…to engage and be relevant with younger audiences.”

Something old, something new

This year’s 30-second Masters ad follows a similar visual format as its predecessors, with views of the greens and the azaleas at the Augusta National Golf Club, shots of some of the past winners like Scottie Scheffler, and fans celebrating that convey a sense of tradition and history.

ESPN aired a teaser spot during the College Football Playoff National Championship with the original version of “Georgia on My Mind” that was meant to appeal to more traditional audiences, too, Epstein said.

While ESPN is looking to attract younger generations and women, the network doesn’t want its core golf audience to lose interest, Epstein said. Her team is aware, she said, that deviating too much from the existing vibe of the Masters could also risk turning off potential new fans if they were to view the new spin as insincere, she said.

“Trying to be too disruptive around the beauty and the traditions of the Masters would just come off as so inauthentic,” Epstein said. “There’s an important needle to thread when you’re trying to engage younger audiences, and if you’re trying too hard, everybody sniffs that out.”

Epstein, who has long overseen ESPN’s marketing strategy for growing its base of women viewers, said she also knows from experience that younger demographics can develop strong fandom if they have some sort of personal connection to the sport, like deeper knowledge of an athlete’s backstory or personal experience playing.

“Music can do that, too,” she said. “Maybe it unlocks someone that was already interested, and is now for sure going to watch.”

Stick Links season

The ESPN team considered using Kahan for the campaign last year, but the project didn’t work out with his schedule, Epstein said. Luckily, he’s just as relevant this year, so ESPN tried again, and this time, the timing linked up, she said.

Kahan has several connections to golf: Besides being a fan and a player himself, Kahan is an investor in Boston Common Golf, one of the teams in Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TGL golf league.

“It all just made perfect sense,” Epstein said. “And then, of course, he’s a phenomenal talent, and we knew that he would bring his own beauty to the rendition, so it just felt like he was a perfect choice to carry on this tradition we have.”

To highlight its work with the artist, ESPN is set to air a behind-the-scenes video of Kahan recording the cover during the Masters preshow, Epstein said. Kahan will also be in attendance at the tournament, and ESPN might create additional content with him, she said.

The overall campaign is meant to drive viewership for the network, Epstein said. While that’s somewhat dependent on the tournament itself, the campaign could help, while also potentially boosting brand equity and association with the Masters, she said.

“Sometimes, you just land on campaigns that feel timeless, but also fresh each year,” Epstein said. “Each year, we get to come with this fresh new voice and personality and their take on this music that is so closely tied now to our campaign.”