Hank Hill, George Liquor Team Up to Promote UFC on Adult Swim

06.29.2016

UFC has turned to two unlikely but fun characters to promote its upcoming UFC 200 pay-per-view event: 's Hank Hill and Ren & Stimpy's George Liquor. They appeared together drinking beer in a branded content spot on Tuesday night to promote Saturday's World Light Heavyweight Championship, a mixed martial arts championship taking place in Las Vegas. The spot combines the look and feel of both shows, making for a trippy, very Adult Swim-like promo.

Getting these two guys together in a branded spot was far more difficult than just drawing them hanging out together. UFC President Dana White, a fan of Adult Swim, found himself watching the network every night before bed, he told Adweek. Branded spots promoting upcoming movies caught his attention and he started thinking about how he could do something similar for UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship).

Digging in to the research, White discovered that not only did he enjoy watching Adult Swim, it also offered the perfect demographic for UFC: the network has led all of cable among young men 18-34 for the past decade and it skews African-American. The challenge was cutting through all the red tape to get both characters to appear on the screen together. Hank Hill was created by , and the rights to King of the Hill are owned by Twentieth Century Fox, although the show does air on Time Warner-owned Adult Swim. The rights to Ren & Stimpy are held by Viacom-owned Nickelodeon, so there was no corporate synergy to make things easier. But White and Adult Swim had both fallen for the idea, so they were willing to fight for it.

Lucky for them, King of the Hill co-creator Mike Judge and Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi are friends and UFC fans.

Later this year, three more UFC-related spots will air on the network, featuring different characters created by Judge and Kricfalusi specifically for the promotion.

In the end, the effort took more than a year and probably cost more than he wanted, but White says it was worth it. As he told Adweek: "It's cool. Tt's different. Nobody's ever done it, and I think that targeted fan base is going to like it."

READ MORE: Adweek​