Dive Brief:

• Just in time for March Madness, CDW and basketball legend Charles Barkley have joined forces once again for the latest installment of a serial campaign launched in 2012.
• "Smart Growth," developed with Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago, sees fictional firm Gordon & Taylor feeling the pressure of its fast growth — pressure that's alleviated when CDW "comes off the bench" like the "seventh man" in basketball and helps drive the ball to the net.
• The campaign focuses on CDW's expertise in cloud computing, mobility, data center optimization, networking, and printing solutions, taking place across broadcast, print, online marketing, a microsite, social media, and more. 

Dive Insight:

CDW isn't the only company to take advantage of March Madness with a campaign, and this isn't the first time it has done so, either. But its methods are smart. Framing itself as the "seventh man" and using a basketball great like Charles Barkley in its campaign helps produce entertaining ads that draw attention that might otherwise have been directed elsewhere. Touting what it can do would be easy enough for CDW to do in a campaign, but wrapping all of that in the humorous story of a fictional company probably garners far more attention.