The National Football League is the most popular sports and entertainment in the world – with 32 teams and millions of fans. And beyond Sunday, it's often the league’s consumer product offerings, from t-shirts and hats to dog leashes and chili bowls, that are the most tangible manifestation of that fandom. With an ever-growing array of product offerings from top licensees, the NFL needs to put its best foot forward to grow its fashion, “Homegating,” and other consumer product initiatives. We’re proud to have worked with the league in this mission for five years.
In building the persona for NFL Fan Style on social, we quickly landed on one driving theme: celebrating and enhancing the life of an NFL fan. We drilled down into this strategy through content that fit into one of two buckets: aspirational and instructional. Showcase what perfect fandom looks like, and then help the audience get there
A world-class brand deserves world-class content. We worked with top chefs, stylists, mixologists, and other lifestyle experts to repeatedly create award-winning original content – including a set of popular gameday-snack recipe videos.
With community growth as a top-level goal, we executed a comprehensive social advertising strategy that resulted in over 600,000 new fans on Facebook alone. Our advertising was iterative and localized, regularly beating industry benchmarks.
Working with the league, we strategized over the 2015 offseason about how to build and launch the NFL’s official Pinterest account. Helped by fashion icon Kristen Cavallari and football legend Dick Butkus, we debuted the account at the 2015 NFL Draft. With an all-hands-on-deck effort, we developed more than 2,000 pins for launch, including custom street-style photography, original “mocktail” recipes, team color palettes, gift guides, and more.
Each season we coordinated a lively blogger council with top influencers from around the country. This group both generated content that reached millions of eyeballs, as well as became a valuable asset in coordinating with licensees, seeding product, and amplifying live events.
As fans ourselves, helping to celebrate the culture of fandom has been a continually rewarding experience. Through a refined content strategy and a precision-targeted advertising plan, we’ve seen audience counts skyrocket. During our engagement, Instagram saw 715% growth – and Facebook grew 1,200%, now both strong channels for supporting NFL consumer products.
Engagement has increased across the board as well, with our marquee content pieces across platforms routinely seeing four and five digit reach metrics. And while the goal here is awareness and not direct sales, we’ve seen our top pins regularly drive thousands of dollars in revenue to retail partners.
