Dive Brief:

• Amazon is making the most of its new sponsorship of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, running four 30-second spots during Thursday's bee finals broadcast, Mashable reports.

• The Kindle-themed ads feature four semi-finalists from this year's contest, spanning a diversity of ages, ethnicities, regional U.S. accents, extra-curricular interests and adorableness. 

• Eleven million students nationwide participated in this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee, with the top 285 finalists vying for the national title. The competition, televised on ESPN Thursday night, ended in a tie for the third consecutive year.

Dive Insight:

The campaign inaugurates Amazon's partnership with the Scripps National Spelling Bee, now in its 89th year. Tying Amazon's Kindle e-reader to the spelling tournament is a marketing no-brainer, frankly, considering the Kindle and the bee are both all about words.

But the ads aired Thursday—feel-good spectacles featuring the kids’ advice to others for success, for spelling bees or other endeavors—were especially well executed. The kids that Amazon plucked for the campaign were photogenic and great on camera, and the ads portrayed them in their natural environments, whether studying for the contest or doing ballet exercises and roller-skating in their homes.

"We frankly wanted to shed light on just how difficult this competition is and what it takes to be a champion—these are not easy words, and it’s impressive to watch a 6-year-old accurately and enthusiastically spell out loud a word you’ve likely never even heard before,” Neil Lindsay, Amazon's vice president of devices, told Mashable in an email.

Thirteen-year-old Jairam Hathwar and 11-year-old Nihar Janga were declared co-champions of the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Each receives a trophy and $45,000 in cash and prizes. Hathwar is the younger brother of 2014 co-champion Sriram Hathwar, and Janga is the youngest winner on record.