Being a football fan is basically a full-time job. To promote its latest collections from NFL Shop, the league’s marketing arm is leaning into the idea of professional fandom.
In a campaign that rolled out during kickoff last month, more than 60 NFL fans rep merch from various teams as NFL players discuss their relationships with fans.
Selling jerseys to football fans might seem about as easy as giving candy to a baby, but the effort is meant to do more than just drive sales, according to Marissa Solis, the league’s SVP of global and brand marketing—it’s also about making fans feel involved, showcasing player personalities, and modernizing the NFL Shop campaign that’s stayed relatively the same as the league has been changing, Solis said.
“For the last five [or] six years, we’ve had a very ‘same’ campaign,” Solis told Marketing Brew. “Every year we say, ‘Hey, go to NFLShop.com [and] purchase your favorite jersey from your favorite team.’…We hadn’t really plused things up or given fans a reason to get excited.”
Full-time fan
The idea behind the campaign, called “Fan Like a Pro,” came from independent creative agency Yard NYC, which Solis said her team brought in to help “change things up” for NFL Shop.
When the agency team started looking into football fandom and fashion, they realized “it’s so much more than a jersey and a hat,” and wanted to highlight the ways people express their fandom through different styles, Yard NYC CEO Ruth Bernstein told us.
“Fans plan, fans anticipate,” Solis said. “They go to battle, if you will, for their team. They are just as professional, they are just as involved, they are just as engaged in the game as the players are…They fan like pros.”
The resulting campaign includes seven spots, which will run for the 18 weeks of the NFL season across broadcast, cable, streaming, and social platforms.
Deep bench
In recent years, the NFL has leaned into “helmets off” content highlighting the personalities of its players, but until now, the NFL Shop campaign was one of the league’s only campaigns that didn’t put athletes front and center, Solis said.
This year’s campaign changes that, featuring Baltimore Ravens wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins, New England Patriots cornerback Christian Gonzalez, Buffalo Bills wide receiver Keon Coleman, Philadelphia Eagles offensive tackle Jordan Mailata, Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, and San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Ricky Pearsall.
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Mailata, who’s from Australia, helps to make the campaign “relevant globally” as the league expands into other countries, Solis said; the NFL’s first regular-season game in Australia is set for next year. In another spot, St. Brown talks about playing in Europe, another key market for the league.
One of the spots, called “Fan Out Loud,” features a group of women fronted by US women’s flag national team player Ashlea Klam. Solis said her team hadn’t initially planned to include flag football, but wanted to showcase the NFL Shop’s products for women with an athlete front and center, which led them to Klam.
The athletes are joined in the ads by six influencers, including comedic duo Darius and Dominic Jones, who were included not simply for their follower counts but because of their genuine fandom for their teams, Solis said.
Walk-on closet
Beyond sprucing up its merch and campaign for NFL Shop this season, the league has been developing “an entire strategy around fashion,” Solis said. That has included moves like bringing on Abercrombie & Fitch as its official fashion partner and collaborating with Colombian singer Karol G on a limited-edition jersey tied to a game in São Paulo, Brazil, earlier this season.
With players like Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson attending Paris Fashion Week and cameras increasingly glued to the game-day outfits of the superstar significant others of NFL players like Taylor Swift and Simone Biles, the NFL has natural ties to fashion, and Solis said the goal is to make fans feel more involved in that culture.
“When we think about what is relevant to fans, what’s going to rile them up, what’s going to make them engage even more with the game year round, there’s several verticals, whether it’s music, whether it’s food, whether it’s gaming,” Solis said. “I think fashion is a key one. It’s something that’s really personal [and] it’s something that can really express your fandom at many levels…There’s really been a lot of conversation around fashion, and it wasn’t until now where we really brought in the fan.”
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