How the NFL harnesses the power of emotion to drive record audiences - Tim Ellis & Glenn Cole

26:14You know, all that is really, of course, helps people get into the game and love the game. I think that, you know, the way that we're sort of surrounding culture with the game in relevant ways is also really helping. Right. And getting ambassadors into the game who are powerful in their own right. So, like, the great thing about the NFL is that there are so many highly influential people out there who love the sport, have a favorite team, have a favorite player. and we integrate them. Like we just talked about football country. A lot of those influencers are in the ads, right? They're in our communications.

26:51I have an incredible influencer and creator group that just does nothing but like bring in these people, men and women who love the game in their own right, have massive sort of online footprints and so forth, massive followings in their audiences. And we like, we give them experiences that money can't buy and they're helping us, right, grow the game. So we're surrounding sort of like we're part of culture and driving culture with with the way that we're approaching our marketing. And that's, I think, having a big impact on on tune in as well. So imagine one of the biggest influence has to be Taylor Swift, right?

27:27Yeah. So have you been able to measure what I mean? If I just take it from a British point of view, I saw more headlines about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey than I saw about the Super Bowl back home. Well, that's not quite true. Oh, maybe you did. No, no, from where we are. So it certainly seemed to reach an audience that wouldn't normally be reached by, that was my perception anyway from afar. So we measure everything, as you can imagine. So, and there is the aspect of like the online buzz and just the general journalistic, you know, impact and buzz that you get from Taylor and Travis. It's really like, it's a story, right?

28:07So it's not, and that story just kept building, right? As an example, the two teams in the Super Bowl were the 49ers and the Chiefs. So the 49ers star fullback has a wife who makes these incredible jackets and so forth. And she began to take on this massive following of people who loved her work. And so what do you know? Taylor's wearing one of her jackets to the game. You can't make this stuff up. Which is our kickoff line. But I think that we know that what Taylor did for us from an audience growth perspective is that we measure a segment, 12 to 24-year-old girls and women. And it's about 8 % of our total audience, and that 8 % grew 30%.

28:59So we measure exactly what she brought to the game. And then, like I said, and then, of course, there is just the, you know, the amount of talk value, the storytelling that you get from it and the excitement that you get from it. So that so, you know, we love Taylor. Yeah, obviously. But we don't you know, we're very careful to not overdo it. Of course. As well, because it is at the end of the day, you know, you want to respect all of your all of your fan base. But there's no doubt about it. She's brought an incredible excitement to the game. But talking about you can't make it up, I mean, that final, like, winning as the Chiefs did, and the role Travis, I mean, you just could not script.

29:37That's Hollywood blockbuster. Under the confetti, they meet at the middle of the field. For a big kiss. For a big kiss. I mean, it's almost like if we had scripted that, it would be a Tim. It's a little obvious. You know, let's not go that far. Let's not go that far. The bit I remember, actually, was he almost played villain when he was screaming at the coach. Do you remember in the first half, something was obviously not going wrong. and he went up and screamed. Right. We were like, we were like, that was the script. We should go argue, but take it down. We all need a bit of negative tension.

30:05You need a little bit. There's a peak end to this. Well, you have to bring it back. Travis is intense. We've worked with him a lot. He's amazing. So is his brother, Jason, by the way, who has a great podcast too. Yeah. And their mom, like their mom is amazing too. Like, so that, again, that's a story, right? Like the story between Travis and Jason and their mom was incredible. And that was before. that was before that, right, the relationship. We put them in the kickoff ad. Yeah, they were actually in the kickoff ad before. We had a joke about the mom having a crush on Jimmy Garoppolo, the quarterback of the 49ers at the time, and they played along.

30:38And I was at the opening game sitting with the mom, and she said, well, I don't know about Travis. I don't think he's ever going to find anyone. He's just like, you know, he's the most eligible bachelor in the world, but he's always moving around. He's always going here and there. It's like, I don't think he's ever going to find anyone. Turns out that she was right. He was the most eligible bachelor in the world. But like, who knows? I mean, she didn't even know at that point that they were already dating. But again, you're just like, it's amazing how it all played out. We're talking about singers and entertainment as well.

31:09A bit of a confession to make to anyone listening. So my first experience of an NFL game was actually going to the Super Bowl in 2011. And I always felt like a fraud. You know, I'm like, geez, what are games to turn up to? But I was working on Gatorade at the time, who were a big, big, big partner of NFL at the time. so I got to go along with Team Gatorade. The thing that struck me was how much happens around the game as well. I mean, I was bumping into big-time rappers and celebrities just at the trailer park bit beforehand, let alone the halftime show, which I think had Black Eyed Peas and Slash from Guns N' Roses drop in for a bit of a jamming session.

31:47It was just an incredible spectacle. I've never seen anything like it. But the whole thing is a show, isn't it? I can see why everyone watches. Yeah, and it starts, actually it starts really early in the week. I don't know when you showed up for that game, but it starts Tuesday, Wednesday, and it just builds. It gets more and more exciting to where you get right into the day before the game. And then there's all these incredible, in fact, the first time I saw Taylor Swift was before the Super Bowl, like I think on a Thursday or Friday night, she was playing a concert as part of the Super Bowl week.

32:23right so like we have incredible artists who are during the week who come and then like as you say like and then there's a tailgate and then you'll have some of the biggest artists in the world who are doing the tailgate yeah right and you'll see anybody and everybody not just from the u.s but from around the world who show up to want to be a part of it and it's a spectacle it's incredibly fun um and and it's just when then when the game starts people about ready to lose their minds by the time that kick off. I even actually, because we work on Gator, we had this sports science institute and we were measuring the kind of fitness of the players and health and nutrition.

32:58So I've got to go down the gym with some of the players a couple of days before the game and just see them work out. What I was fascinated by, again, I was quite surprised about this, was how specifically fit they are in terms of their position. And for one of them it might be agility, for one it might be pure strength, for another one it might be cardio. But it's like every kind kind of imaginable body type and shape and fitness is very specific, isn't it? Compared to other sports where it's more everyone kind of. One of the beauties of this sport, I think. And one of the things I'm most grateful for the NFL doing with this increased scale and scale and scale, because you could look at it cynically and say, well, it's just getting bigger and bigger.

33:35That is true. But we use it to bring more people into the into the game, not just to watch the NFL, but to play the game and learn all the things you can learn from it. And it is universally accessible. There's a position for everyone and every skill set, every body type, every mentality, defense office. I think more than any other sport on earth, you can make a case for it. I'm going to call it soccer. Forgive me. And you can really specialize and become a craftsperson in that role and be very valuable to the team, invaluable to the team potentially in any role. so and i do love that i i think the the other side of you know taylor's helping grow the game is this commitment to opening the door and bringing more people in at the flag level and doing what we're trying to do behind the scenes to to make it uh uh properly competitive at the high school level in america right now i think it's in 12 12 states have ratified it as a varsity sport 18 are on the way describe the flag uh because that's a really good example of isn't extending the franchise into a new audience.

34:40Even internationally, it's on fire as a sport, just like it's off the charts, it's growth. I think in England in particular, I'm sure the NFL being there has helped, and the NFL is very active on the ground there, which is part of, I think, being a good brand, right? Yeah, I mean, it's the most inclusive part about the sport itself, right? Being able to play a flag, anyone can do it. Anybody. Any gender, any body shape, it doesn't matter. like you can play also is a much simpler and less expensive way to play as well right like around the world so but we're intentionally really pushing hard to grow it here in the united states because we know it'll just bring more people into the game i mean if you participate if you play the game you're four times as likely to become a lifelong fan of any sport but definitely football but with football yeah and so and we also know all the data shows that like if you don't get a fan by the time that they're 18 years old, you're not going to get one.

35:37So youth flag is incredibly important. I mean, you can end up playing Madden and get to know the game, and that's a way, an avenue as well in there. But playing the game with a beatacler flag is incredibly important. So it became a real strategy for us to get people to actually, who normally would not be playing the game, to sort of get excited about it and to elevate it as a badass sport. Not like a sort of a softer, weaker, if you will, expression of the sport, but is a true, cool, badass sport for men and women. And so to see some of these women that are playing this game right now is great.

36:11And we take, like in our advertising and marketing, we take some of the best sort of emerging young athletes and we put them in our biggest pieces of communication. We just talked about football country. Well, that's got some of the coolest young women who are out there today really like just killing it. We see you, McKenna. We see you. Yeah. So, you know, in celebrating them and then working together with the 32 teams. So if the league, with the power that the league has in our platform, and then you think the power of those 32 teams and the athletes who play those teams, if we all work together, which we have been, to like really promote and to like recruit young flag players and to help them grow their local sort of like programs in their communities.

36:54I mean, just in the last year, female flag has grown more than doubled in one year. That's incredible. incredible. That is amazing. It wasn't long ago that it was considered kind of like, you know, like something you do like in the very early years before you play tackle. And now it's an option. Now it's seen as an option. And for the first time, it's going to be in the Olympics. So for the LA 28 Olympics, we're going to have flag football for the first time. All these countries. Two years ago, we did a Super Bowl ad with a Latina. So like the female flag quarterback of the Mexican team Deanna Flores was the focus of that ad.

37:32These guys came up with this great idea. I met her in Mexico actually at the game. I'm like, oh, my God, we've got to do this ad. I mean, she's incredible. We were on the fence about it, and he calls me and goes, okay, I just met Deanna. We're totally doing that ad. Yeah, we've got to do this ad. She was running rings around everybody in the ad, wasn't she? Well, you know, we did our research. We had the idea for the ad. We didn't have the casting necessarily, and then we started researching her from the World Games. Actually, she and Vanita Crouch, the U.S. quarterback, just blew our minds. She had probably one of the best games of her life at the time of that final.

38:03And we couldn't stop replaying. We're like, this is as badass as an athletic, like, entertaining entertainment experience as anything we see. And then we weren't sure, though. And just because, you know, you haven't met the person, Tim had the benefit of meeting her at the game. I met her, and I was just like, immediately, we got to do this. She's a great ambassador for the sport, obviously. And she was, and she still is. and we incorporated her. I think one of the things that we're getting really good at is that the ad is one big expression of it or the campaign or the Super Bowl commercial, what have you.

38:38But then everything else we do, we incorporate the idea, the movement in our marketing. And even in the game, because for example, we have a Pro Bowl. So for the first time a couple of years ago, we decided, okay, we're going to do flag in the Pro Bowl because the players don't really want to get hurt for them that their season's over. So, like, how can we inject athleticism and passion into the Pro Bowl? Well, let's do flag. And we also want to, like, encourage people to play the game. So let's take our best athletes and actually put them out there in the Pro Bowl. Well, Deanna, coming back to where we're talking about Deanna, Deanna was one of the coaches.

39:14So she became, like, an offensive coordinator for that game, for the Pro Bowl. Very stressful. Peyton Manning was really stressing her out, man. You can see it on TV. Vanita Kraut was Eli's, I think. I do love how you blend in past and current players, don't you? And play on the jokes and everything like that. It's very, very well. Well, talking about new audiences, the other thing I'm fascinated, of course, is the fact that you now feature NFL in London. So, you know, UK being the home of soccer, right? So what are the kind of challenges in putting on? Because also, I think from a team point of view, right?

39:46You've got home advantage, which is a well-known phenomena. You're taking them overseas to a different country. They lose home advantage, and they're with an audience that are not as well kind of versed in, you know, the stories and the statistics and maybe haven't grown up with the teams. Yeah, how do you get around all that? Well, I will say this. In the beginning, when we first started playing there, people did not really understand. They loved being there. They thought it was really exciting to see these guys out there playing, but they didn't really understand the game. And so they were sort of clapping, you know, at the wrong time of the game and so forth.

40:16And so, but now, like, you know, the last couple, three years that I've gone, it's awesome because they totally get the game and it's all locals. And like a lot of people from different parts of Europe also show up right to the London games and it's just exciting, but they embrace it in their own way. Yes. Right. Like they, as an example, they love to sing the entire stadium starts singing American songs. Like, you know, sweet Caroline is being set at the top of their lungs. It's just so fun to listen to that. And, and then, you know, all the fans who come, they, they all wear their favorite team's jerseys.

40:48So you might have the Jaguars and the Titans playing, but they're all wearing Steelers and Cowboys and Seahawks and 49ers, whatever. They wear their own jerseys of the team that they love. And that's just kind of fun because they're embracing the game. And so, yeah, sure, sometimes the home team is not really getting the most love in that game. It doesn't really matter. All the teams understand it. They think it's awesome to be in these countries. We're now, you know, just this year, we went to Brazil for the first time. We'll have two games in London this year. We'll be in Germany again. We'll be in Munich this year.

41:25Last year, we were in Frankfurt. It's just awesome. And we have plans to go to the Middle East, to go to Asia. Like this is, we're in a sort of part of our history now where we're really expanding the game globally. And that's playing the game. That's also developing players throughout, you know, all over the world. And last year's Super Bowl ad, we sort of celebrated the fact that we had a player pathway program in Africa. So it all took place. We went to Ghana and did, I mean, talk about ambitious. So we went to Ghana, and we went to the biggest market on the busiest day of the year, and we decided to play tackle football in that market.

42:03Live. Live. While the market was live. And it was just crazy fun. It was kind of scary, but it was crazy fun, and the ad turned out amazing. And again, so it was just sort of like shining a light on some exciting things happening in the NFL where we're really pushing the game forward. So like every major campaign we do, we see it as an opportunity to sort of like, how do we expand the view of this game? How do we push the game forward? What can we do to sort of like surprise people and do things that they didn't see coming and continue to push that game forward? And I think we've become pretty good at that.

42:39Now, you've client-side created Super Bowl ads, and obviously you've produced Superlows as well. What advice would you give somebody to put on a good Superlows? Because it's the most competitive. I mean, given I've watched every single one for five years, there are 80 of the world's most phenomenal creative talents and brands kind of putting it out there sort of thing. What's the secret to really winning that moment? I'll start from the creative agency side and Tim can maybe pick it up from the client side since he has so much success there too across brands. it's very tempting to get caught up in the uh the hoopla of it and i do see creative people get distracted by i just have to entertain just do something entertaining and you kind of stop playing with your fundamentals like in a sport you just start trying to dunk the shouldn't use basketball metaphor you just start trying to do crazy things without like remembering what got you there and so just staying purposeful about and focusing on what your brand really needs and treating it like just another media moment, I think, is absolutely key.

43:42You almost have to over-rotate that way because Super Bowl creates this energy in the hallways that's unreasonable. I think people also underestimate how hard it is to get to a great idea, and it's very easy to want to convince yourself this is great when it's good or really good, and good or really good is not good enough in the Super Bowl. So I don't know how many rounds we go. we probably go two, three months, sometimes four months in development. We spend much more time in development than we do in execution. We don't fear short execution. We probably prefer it, actually. But we don't, yeah.

44:15I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's trade-offs. But we measure, measure, measure, measure, measure. When we cut, we go. Yeah, and here's what I would say. I had a CFO who asked me one time, well, don't you hate doing Super Bowl ads? Because, you know, if they're not good, most CMOs just get fired. I'm like, no, I don't hate Super Bowl ads, first of all. Second of all, I don't even think about getting fired because if you think about getting fired, you're probably going to do a really lousy job. So I always remind people, like, this is fun. Like, you get a chance to do a Super Bowl ad. This is amazing, right?

44:48Like, to get in front of that many people with a great ad is just so, it's such a special opportunity. So, like, let's relax. Because if you get tensed up and everyone's worried or you're like, oh, God, we have to do that. you're not going to have a great ad because you're going to be, you're not going to be relaxed. You're not going to have the right environment to actually produce a great ad. So love the work and get excited about being able to do it and just work your tail off to get to a great place. And then like craft the shit out of it once you get there, right? Like once you get there and you get a great ad, get the right directors, get the right, you know, people in play, like let's just really like craft the hell out of this thing.

45:24And so I think that we've, and we always, you know, Glenn's right. We always do something which we know is uniquely NFL. Like this is core to our Helmosoft strategy. This is really pushing the brand forward. This is going to sort of surprise people that the NFL came out with this. But they'll really embrace it and love it because it's like, oh, I didn't know this side of the NFL. This is cool. I like this right now. I didn't know they were going to talk this way. So I think that doing something on the one hand, which is true to your brand, but also something which is really they didn't see it coming.

45:54right to do something really different is important uh and i think that ultimately you know we always aim to be the best like you've got what 65 66 ads that are in there we're trying to win we're trying to win like we want it to be the best out of all and our track record is pretty darn good it is good we've been in the top i mean every i think every year we've been pretty much in the top 10 and we've been one two and three yeah a few times so like And we take pride in that because we know that in any given game, we'll have between 20 and 50 million people who show up to that game. There's over 200 million for the Super Bowl.

46:33So that is our chance to talk to audiences that don't normally tune in for an NFL game. So it's really, it helps us kind of bring those people in and make them fans, right? This is our opportunity to make fans. So it is really from a brand building and a business perspective, that Super Bowl ad for us is really important. Yeah. I pulled off the last, the winners on our System 1 database, which measures emotional response to the ads for the last six years. The diversity of winners actually was quite interesting, and it shows the broad appeal. So, I mean, one of my personal favorites is Huggies.

47:06I don't even remember the Huggies. We got you, baby. But, I mean, imagine, like, showing kids born on Super Bowl morning. It's the innovation that Super Bowl creates as well, to try things that haven't been done before. But, you know, Huggies won. Microsoft won six years ago with the game controller. That was emotional, showing this young kid who has a disability, using the game controller to get online, which is incredible. Disney have won. Jeep, Groundhog Day, tapping into popular culture. But it's amazing the sort of diversity of advertisers and creative and ideas that the Super Bowl gives us every year.

47:38Yeah. I mean, it's the only time in any country, in any event, where people literally sit down to not just watch the sport, but to watch the ads. A hundred percent. Like, you know, you don't want to leave the room when the ads are on. You want to be there. So like, you know, you try to manage being in the room. Like you don't want to miss a great ad. And then it's the only time that everybody all talks about the ad. So like it's in all, you know, people like yourselves are like talking about it and grading them and giving their point of view. But that's happened at the, you know, at work too. And it's happening at home and people are texting about the best ads and so forth.

48:13So it's really fun to be a part of that, to be in the conversation. I hope that of your audience, the folks who are directly in marketing or who have Tim's job or aspire to have a job like Tim someday. I just the his advice to just have fun with it. I could say that as a, you know, the creative leader of a creative agency. I think my staff would expect that. We don't hear a lot of clients say those words. I'm not sure I've ever heard a client say those words about Super Bowl. If anything, there's a lot of tension and pressure and like, hey, you know, big investment here. What are we doing? What do you got?

48:45You know, you hear the sound of the clock on the wall. And I just I think that sets a tone for your team's culture to be free and radical. And I hope I hope for more of you marketers out there to show up that way to your agencies. It will do more. It will put more air in their sale, wind in their sales than anything else you can do. And I love that. I mean, he's a creative person by trade. But it's and and emotionally, you're right. But also data wise, you're right, because all the data would suggest that creativity is an enormous business multiplier. Yeah. And we don't treat it as that. And it's a real shame because the pressure on CMOs to kind of go short term, you know, avoid the risk, don't get into trouble, you know, all the rest of it.

49:30It's great. It's really, really inspiring. It's so funny. There's such a narrative about, you know, the right message at the right time, rational ways to engage people in moments. And I really, you know, still believe ultimately everything we're offering everybody requires an irrational decision on their part. They need to be moved to irrationality to buy a thing or spend their hours on something. It requires a creative idea, a creative leap and an emotional engagement to do it. And as soon as you understand why people buy what they buy and why they make the decisions they make and you realize it's based on emotion.

50:04And that's that's how we're hardwired. Right. And then we go all in on rational features and benefits. It doesn't make sense. Tim has, Tim, I'll say one thing, Tim, you have a, Tim has a piece of feedback. He gives anybody who comes onto our NFL team at 72 and say, okay, I'm going to tell you what the feedback is going to be for the first three meetings. You don't even need to have to do the meeting if you don't want, but this is what the feedback is going to be. Make it more emotional. That's true. And then I think that'll still be the comment. Make people feel something. Yeah. Make people really feel something.

50:30I mean, it's gotta be smart and it's gotta be, make you think differently about the brand, but if you don't feel anything, and I think that that's one of the dangers and I sort of short, span of attention that we have and the way that now with social media and some of the emerging platforms, everything is sort of short form and everyone's like swiping to the next thing that they don't have time to really actually feel anything. And I think that we have to be careful not to lose that craft that we have as marketers and as creative people. And I think that also with the emergence of AI and data at our fingertips and how to use that stuff to create bigger, more interesting ideas and to craft it and to give you insight into what things will actually make people think differently and make people feel things.

51:17Right. So like, I think I'm not afraid of AI because I know that we'll only use it in order to do things which will truly move people. Exactly. Right. We're not looking for that sort of like to creative solution to things. If AI can help us get to a great creative place, fantastic. Like any technology, that's great. if data can help you get more closer, help you get closer to your fans or find something out about them that will enable you to connect with them in a powerful way. Fantastic. Right? But like, don't have that be the end result. I just think, you know, today with all the technology and so forth, that people are spending, CMOs, I'll just say it, CMOs are spending more time thinking about how not to get fired than they are about doing the right thing.

52:02Right? And I think that, and they're trying to use data and trying to use AI and everything else to sort of prove out that what they're doing is effective. Instead of just doing things that in their gut and then their collective experience, know will be powerful and will move things forward. Amen. Amen to that. Well, I think that's the perfect place to end, actually. That's a brilliant rallying cry. Thank you both. That's been amazing. Very excited. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to make sure I get down to the game in October. Wembley calling. I think we will have seats for you. I'm going to be there with you.

52:30Yes, that's going to be fun. Awesome. Well done, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

53:04Amen.