Hass Avocado launches campaign featuring John Lynch

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The Hass Avocado Board has launched a major campaign designed to spotlight avocados as the perfect food for college football fans.  At the center of the campaign is football star John Lynch, who made a name for himself at Stanford and went on to become a nine-time pro-bowler and Super Bowl champion.  The endorsement deal was secured in just one week, a sharp departure from prevailing assumptions about the difficulty and complexity of landing talent.


Created by FOX Sports in partnership with Brand Affinity Technologies (BAT), the campaign includes a 30-second television spot as well as online placements. It will run through December.

Using BAT’s Endorsement Platform, FOX Sports was able to select the best celebrity for the campaign based on target demographics and deep information about consumer affinity, and secure the deal with John Lynch – all in just one week.

“FOX Sports was excited at the challenge of creating a compelling campaign for Hass Avocados around FSN and the Big Ten Networks’ college football telecasts,” said Chris Hannan, SVP Marketing FOX Regional Sports Networks. “We turned to BAT to secure an athlete’s participation in the campaign, and John Lynch has proven to be the ideal spokesman for the Hass Avocado campaign.  Lynch had a distinguished career on the field and has a bright future ahead of him on television both in broadcasting and advertising.”

BAT came to market 18 months ago with a vision for opening up the world of endorsement marketing to many more advertisers, and many more celebrities. The Hass campaign is the most recent in a string of successes powering innovative cross-media endorsement campaigns for powerhouse advertisers such as AT&T, Ford, Comcast, Intuit, and Samsung. More than 3,600 celebrities have signed on to BAT’s Endorsement Platform, including marquee active and retired players in nearly every sport, such as: Drew Brees (NFL), Jorge Posada (MLB), Rajon Rondo (NBA), Brooks Robinson (MLB – Hall of Fame), Walt Frazier (NBA – Hall of Fame), and Lennox Lewis (Boxing), as well as Olympic athletes.

“Football season is here – and advertisers that tap in to the passion and loyalty that consumers feel for their favorite stars are poised to win fans of their own,” said Ryan Steelberg, President and CEO of BAT (and former DMarc principal, who sold the company to Google Radio).  “Endorsements are one of the most effective and authentic ways to align with football – and we’re making it fast, cost-efficient, and easy to do deals.”

RBR-TVBR observation: There are multiple broadcsting connections here. The avocado pitch man is John Lynch Jr., who retired from the NFL in 2008 and has since been working TV games for Fox. His father, John Lynch Sr., played for the Pittsburgh Steelers and later became a radio group owner. He was in the news most recently when he sued over being fired by his financial partners in San Diego.