The Strategy

Feel more.

Most of everyday life is spent minimizing risk and keeping instincts in check. Sports is the one place left where people actively choose to put something on the line.

The second you lock in a prediction, fandom stops being passive. Every snap feels bigger. Every play matters more. Not because the outcome is everything, but because the space between making a pick and finding out what happens wakes up the part of you that everyday life puts to sleep: hope, possibility, irrational confidence, and even dread.

Underdog is the Playground for that tension. The campaign invites fans to embrace those feelings fully and unleash their inner rascal.

THe Creative

Unleash your Dog.

To get people to actually embrace that feeling, we created someone to coach them through it: The Dog.

He is not a mascot or a pitchman. He is a guru, a loyal companion, and an occasional social liability. He has dog instincts and a world-class nose for sniffing out predictions, but what makes him essential is how he navigates the chaos and adrenaline between a pick and a payout. Wherever Dave goes, The Dog is there with total, unbothered confidence, coaching him through the sweat, while everyone around them accepts his presence as completely normal. He never acknowledges the joke, and he never delivers a product demo.

To build that world, we brought in collaborators working at the highest level of film and comedy. Director Jody Hill (Eastbound & Down, The Righteous Gemstones, Observe and Report) treated the absurd with dead-serious conviction, refusing to wink at the camera so every moment felt grounded. Legendary cinematographer Robert Yeoman (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Bridesmaids) gave the entire production cinematic scale and deadpan precision. And Paul Walter Hauser brought everything he had, fully inhabiting The Dog with sharp instincts and total commitment. He did not treat it like a commercial. He treated it like a role.

Together, we approached every spot like a mini-episode from a world you would actually want to keep watching. Across eight films, The Dog talks Dave through a 4th-and-goal like a spiritual guide, cons his way onto a flight in a makeshift "Service Dog" vest, frantically buries a million bones in the yard, steals an entire Thanksgiving turkey, and takes over the commercial break itself with two meta, one-shot streamer spots right where the sweat lives. The world extends far beyond broadcast into high-impact out-of-home, dedicated social content, audio, digital, and live game-day experiential activations.