The Hampton Inn Basketball Commercials: teenagers, a basketball, a video camera and YouTube

You may have seen the commercial where the kid chucks the ball off the roof and then it one-bounces on the driveway into the hoop for a basket. Other commercials in the campaign feature a basket bounced in off of a tree, a ball kicked in like an NFL punt and a shot that goes in from long distance after being struck by a baseball bat. The commercials promote a loyalty program for the Hampton Inn with the payoff, “Want an Easier Way to Score Points?”

It’s not an uncommon response to think that these shots were the result of some trick video editing, but that’s not the case.

A group of teenage boys from Hoover, Alabama planned, executed and filmed these shots. At the time, they never realized they’d be shown as commercials that played on national TV during the NCAA Final Four, at NBA arenas and on the Jumbotron at Times Square in NYC.

Carson Stalnaker, the ringleader and cameraman of the group, describes how the boys started out 2 years prior to the commercials airing, “One day, my friends and I were playing basketball and the ball rolled away. I went to get it. Just for fun, I kicked the ball back from behind the goal, and it went over the top of the goal and hit the rim. Everyone was thinking how cool it would have been if it went in. Every once in awhile, we would try it just to see if it would go in. We told the people there that if it did go in, we had to tell people about it cause no one would believe it.”

When Stalnaker acquired a Digital Blue video camera, the group decided it would be fun to tape the shots. Stalnaker said, “We were going to make DVD’s and sell them for money. That idea did not become a reality so we decided to put them on YouTube.”

The degree of difficulty of the shots requires the group to try shot after shot, sometimes pausing to delete the missed shots to create more space on the tape. One shot took almost 4 hours to make, but the average is about an hour.

After posting the “The Legendary Shots” on YouTube, the boys tracked how many visitors came to watch their videos. They spent some time defending the legitimacy of their videos as some of the shots appeared so unlikely that many assumed they had to be fake.

Draft FCB, a worldwide advertising agency with headquarters in NYC and Chicago was working on an assignment for Hampton Inn that focused on the Double Hilton HHonors base points offer. “Basketball immediately came to the team’s mind as a creative angle,” according to Draft FCB’s VP Jim Dzwierzynski, “ Not only did it lend itself well to the ‘double points’ offer we were communicating, but Hampton already had a college basketball sponsorship in place for 2009.” Dzwierzynski continued, “During the creative process, our art director remembered seeing YouTube footage of real kids scoring points with the most difficult and unbelievable basketball shots. The authenticity and realness of both the kids featured and their unbelievable shots captured on YouTube, perfectly personifies that earning points shouldn’t be so difficult and Hampton makes it easy.”

An agency representative contacted Carson through YouTube. Carson’s mom, Jill Stalnaker, followed up and a deal was quickly struck.

Carson said, “ The first time I saw the Hampton Inn commercial, we had been told by the ad agency that it would start airing the next weekend. It was a Tuesday and I was sitting at our computer doing homework and the TV was on. I look over at the television and saw our next door neighbors house on TV and I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Then I realized it was our commercial and started screaming. We were able to get it on DVR, called the shooter, he and his mom came over in jammies at 10:00pm to see it. It was so exciting, we watched it over and over.

Soon, “The Hampton Inn Hotshots” were the toast of the town appearing on the front page of the Birmingham News, a segment on the local CBS News and appearing on Good Day Alabama.

Hoover High School, noted for its strong football program — yes, this is the same school featured in MTV’s “Two-a-Days: Hoover High” with Coach Propst — now had a contingent noted for its basketball shooting. The core group of kids are: Carson Stalnaker, William Snoddy, Jeff Keith, Chase Martin, Bryan Anderson, Barret Crawford, Jeffrey Higgenbotham, Alex Watkins, and Phil Latko. Although none of this group play on the school basketball team, their basketball skills have been seen by more viewers than probably any high school player in the country.

So, did the commercials work? According to Judy Christa-Cathey, Vice President Hampton Brand Marketing, “The combination of our 15 second television spots with our Hilton HHonors reward incentives is a winning combination driving incremental revenue to our hotels. We launched this in the fourth quarter of 2008 and are maximizing it for the entire 2009 calendar year to impact our performance.”

In the first commercial, Carson’s classmate William Snoddy is shown making the shot that bounces off the roof and into the basket. “When the shot went in, I felt relieved when I realized I accomplished something that took quite awhile to do,” said Snoddy.

How did the group get permission to shoot off of the roof of the house? Carson, revealing some tricks of the trade, said, “Our next-door neighbor didn’t find out we were using his roof until he saw the commercial on TV.”

###

###

The First Commercial

The Second Commercial

The Third Commercial