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The Masters Tournament is played down south in Augusta, Georgia, but this year, the golf championship is getting a bit of a northern attitude.<\/p>\n
For the past six years, ESPN has promoted its broadcast coverage of the Masters by creating ads set to covers of Ray Charles\u2019s \u201cGeorgia on My Mind\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Between his talent, love of golf, and the \u201csense of place\u201d conveyed through his music, Kahan was a natural fit for the campaign, according to Rachel Epstein, ESPN\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re always going to be fairly traditional and reverent in terms of how we visually showcase the tournament,\u201d Epstein told Marketing Brew. \u201cBut just knowing that the Masters\u2014certainly Augusta National and ESPN\u2014are constantly looking to engage and reach younger audiences, music just felt like this important and powerful device that we could use\u2026to engage and be relevant with younger audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n