The NFL provides one of the true water-cooler events left on TV—fans still gather in living rooms nationwide each Sunday to watch their favorite teams and favorite players, not wanting to miss a play. As a reflection of the sport’s importance, and thus the league’s, the NFL this season is launching a new campaign that focuses on its fans.

Jaime Weston, the NFL’s VP of brand and creative, spoke with Fast Company about how 32 teams came under one umbrella while keeping singular brands, the NFL Now platform and how she feels about the sport she markets.

Weston has been with the NFL for 12 years, and she says that a large part of that time was spent identifying exactly what the NFL’s defining brand was.

“We did a lot of work with our fans to understand our brand essence,” said Weston, “which comes down to three words: intense, meaningful, and unifying.”

Using these words, NFL’s branding seeks authentic storytelling for a national tradition: “At the end of the day, what we deliver is a game that’s intense: The fact that your team only plays one day a week—every second matters, every down matters. Meaningful: It really is much more than a game to us. We really permeate well beyond the Xs and Os on the field. And unifying: We’re like that last great American campfire, in that people come together and share stories.”

Part of this is fan outreach. The NFL’s new “Together We Make Football” campaign asks fans to submit reasons why they love the sport in order to win tickets to the Super Bowl and the NFL International Series in London. The contest plays on last year’s “Why do you love football?” with a simple change of narrative. Instead of asking individuals, the league wants answers from entire communities, asking “Why do we love football?”

Another aspect of this is understanding the experience for fans of each team. Weston says that the NFL will travel to teams’ hometowns to watch games as fans and get fan feedback, reporting back on how the team sees itself versus how fans see it so it can report on any dissonance.

“From a marketing standpoint, we can’t control the Xs and Os on the field—we have no effect on the outcome of the game. But we can help control or influence every other touchpoint. So if you think about a fan, 50% of the time he can be really annoyed about his team. Can you imagine having a brand where 50% of the time the consumer is not happy with it? If we can’t control the players on the field, how do we make sure every other touchpoint is uplifting and really something the fans want to interact with?”

For example, when the Atlanta Falcons was going through some trouble with Michael Vick, the NFL looked into how the team was representing itself and found that its message was more intimidating than the players and owner really were. Weston’s team recommended a more uplifting tone, resulting in Samuel L Jackson’s campaign “Rise Up” (below). “You always want your brand to live above a player or coach because they might not always be there—your brand is bigger than that.”


Going into the 2014-15 season, the NFL also is promoting its NFL Now app, with customizable team coverage and clips for fans.

Read more at Fast Company.

Brief Take: Weston and her NFL team take a hands-on approach that starts at the top and works its way to the fans, giving its brand campaigns a home-grown feel that resonates in teams’ local markets.

[Image courtesy of Fast Company]

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