The NFL teamed up with creative agency from 72andSunny for a Super Bowl spot that focused on the future evolution of the league featuring a 15-year-old female player named Sam Gordon and Diana Flores (the quarterback of the Mexican women’s national team as the league) – thus acknowledging that the women’s game, youth participation and alternate forms of football are key parts of the sport’s future.
Debuting on air during Fox’s Sunday Night Super Bowl LVII telecast, the NFL’s own ‘Run With It’ commercial starts with a fun misdirect (a live interview with Erin Andrews that goes awry) and spills over into an enthralling game of flag football that takes the sport to new places. The structure of the spot adopts a classic sportswear ad approach in so much as it is based around a set-up, an adventurous athletic chase packed with comic cameos.
The cameos include several current NFL stars (such as Sauce Gardner, Jalen Ramsey, Aidan Hutchinson, Cam Hayward and Davante Adams (wearing a parrot suit and who starred in the pre-Game teasers), plus Hall of Fame quarterback Jim Kelly, US women’s flag football quarterback Vanita Krouch, plus high school tackle player Bella Rasmussen, stars from other sports (including tennis great Billie Jean King) and social media stars and influencers (such as YouTuber MrBeast who boasts 133m YouTube follows which is 10-times the NFL’s own platform following)
Flores, the spot’s star and the quarterback of the Mexico women’s national flag football team sprints through an enthralling and entertaining, 90-second frenetic film which embodies the NFL’s future expansion and evolution strategy.
By featuring an Hispanic female flag footballer, the league focuses on several strands of its future strategy: firstly growing flag football as a serious format of the game (particularly in high schools where safety concerns about the traditional, full tackle form of football is dramatically reducing participation, secondly encouraging fandom among women and people of colour and finally several short, social and gaming cameos courting a youth market that is critical to the game’s future.
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“Youth, Latinos and female fans are our best opportunity to drive further growth in this country. This ad talks to all three,” explained NFL Chief Marketing Officer Tim Ellis who added that promoting this trio of themes without sacrificing entertainment is key to successful NFL marketing in the coming years. “Flag is a terrific opportunity because it’s fast, it’s fun, and it’s inclusive. Anyone can play, and they can play anywhere. So we decided to take our biggest marketing moment of the year and focus on flag, and on all the girls and women who are driving this game forward.”
“This is such a perfect story because, yes, it’s about flag, but it’s also about our growing fan base,” added NFL Head Of Global Brand and Consumer Marketing Marissa Solis who has been spearheading some of the NFL’s efforts to diversify its fan base. “Diana is such an incredible athlete. She has been pushing the sport forward. Everything you see in the spot is her. It’s so perfect to showcase her skills. Plus, she is a Latina. Our Latino fanbase is 31 million strong and growing. So, yes, it’s strategic, but it’s also just a wonderful story.”
“The way athletes move, it’s a language,” outlined 72andSunny Co-Founder (and former Widen + Kennedy Nike marketer) Glenn Close. “You do your best to get an athlete to give you 100%, so you’re hearing them fully—their full self-expression. And it’s hard because this is their livelihood and they don’t want to injure themselves. But Diana was in 110%. She has a dance background, which, along with her football skills, it’s like she’s speaking a different language. It looks like a new kind of sport language, unique to her, and we’re hoping girls everywhere see this and think, ‘I could do this, and bring my own kind of language to it, too.’”
According to Ellis, featuring Flores was initially a secondary idea and was put forward as a suggestion for next year’s Super Bowl, but Ellis fast-tracked the idea after meeting Flores in Mexico City in November.
“I was just like, wow, she’s incredible. Amazing energy,” added Ellis. “I called the team and said ‘We’ve got to find a way to do this spot.’ We pivoted right before Christmas, and we couldn’t be happier about how it turned out.”
The spot was helmed by Hungry Man’s Bryan Buckley: who has directed more than 65 Big Game spots. Buckley.
“This is one of those spots where people will remember where they were when they first saw it,” Buckley commented. “I get emotional about it because the journey to get to this spot is really important. It’s a big, important piece of work. This is a brand saying, ‘This is where we’re going. Get on the train or don’t.’ To me, that’s incredible. So the creative has to deliver on another level.”
Comment
This enlightening and exhilarating film reflects the league’s growth strategy across multiple audiences and in multiple markets.
Four years ago, the NFL celebrated its centenary with a celebratory, banquet battling Super Bowl spot that was fairly traditional in so much that it featured a starry line-up of many of the league’s top players from the past and present. It was focused on the present and the past, but there are a hint at the league’s future evolution at the end of the ad. This year’s Big Game ad was entirely focused on that future.
Repositioning flag football has become a key plank of the NFL’s future strategy amidst declining youth participation and increasingly alarming head (and other) injuries to so many full tackle football players. The league is encourage school athletic associations across the USA and overseas to incorporate flag football into its football programmes. This Super Bowl spot focus on flag follows on from the previous week’s ‘NFL Pro Bowl Games’ flag focus.
2023’s work follows on from previous NFL Super Bowls spots such as 2022’s ‘Bring Down The House’, 2021’s ‘As One’ and 2020’s ‘Take It To The House’.
As for the game itself, well, it was a thriller and we will just leave this here.
.@PatrickMahomes and the @Chiefs are larger than life ? pic.twitter.com/gNgilugKmt
— NFL (@NFL) February 13, 2023
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