NFL turns celebrity romances into marketing
“The NFL isn't just selling football anymore, it's selling the entire world surrounding football.”
Transcript
This might be one of the craziest guerrilla marketing strategies I've seen in sports. Because those viral photos of NFL quarterbacks hanging out with their famous girlfriends during training camp, they might not have been as organic as they looked. Justin Herbert with Madison Beer, Joe Burrow with the Livy of Ponton, Jackson
Dart with Marissa Ayers. Front office sports just reported that these moments were at least partly coordinated as NFL scales up content specifically designed to attract more female fans. Now let's be clear, there was zero evidence the NFL manufactured these
relationships. And I highly doubt we're talking about some pay to play girlfriend operation. But would I be surprised if introductions, access and opportunities to put these people in the same rooms became more intentional? Not at all. Because the NFL has already seen how powerful this can be.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey showed that millions of people can become interested in football without football being the thing that originally brought them there. So why spend all of your time trying to convince someone the actual game is interesting? Instead, just make everything around the game interesting.
Relationships, fashion, celebrities, creators, culture. The NFL has roughly 53 million followers across Instagram and TikTok. Madison Beer, Olivia Ponton and Marissa Ayers have more than 70 million combined. And just one NFL post about Herbert and Beer reportedly generated TEDx the
engagement of its average Instagram post. That is an insane distribution hack. And there's a lesson here way beyond sports. Sometimes you don't need to change your core product. You need to create more doors into it. I might not care about wine, but I'll absolutely go to Napa for the restaurants
, hotels, scenery and general vibe. And while I'm there, I might drink some wine. The NFL isn't just selling football anymore, it's selling the entire world surrounding football. And if they're doing this intentionally, that is a world champion level guerrilla marketing strategy.
In the industry, every business model, there's a larger opportunity hiding inside of it. I'm here to help you find them. Follow me for more tech and AI news.