SBJ Marketing: Verizon goes bold with localized Super Bowl play

The eternal Super Bowl marketing conundrum: how to cut through the most cluttered environment possible at the event reaping more eyeballs than anything else on U.S. airwaves.

For more than 50 years, America’s biggest brands have tried to solve that riddle by spending millions for ad time, usually with an additional seven-figure expense for top-shelf talent and directors -- only to end up victimized by the USA Today Ad Meter, a metric generally despised within creative agency walls (except by the winners).

Call this newest effort a Super Bowl counter-offensive on behalf of below-the-line marketing. Verizon, long one of the biggest NFL league sponsors, is staging what amounts to a nationwide Super Bowl watch party and fan fest in 30 NFL markets and largely at NFL stadia.

With 30+ Super Bowls notches on the belt, I'm comfortable saying the size and scope of this promotion is the largest I've seen. Add up all the moving parts -- 5,000 tickets per venue at 22 NFL stadiums and eight arenas across 30 markets; 120 players making appearances; and about 10,000 people serving fans at those events.

An additional complication: tying in Verizon’s retail in those markets.

Nick Kelly, Verizon's VP/sponsorships and partnerships, laughingly called the fan fest concept "a little bit scary" and noted the concept grew out of a companywide imperative stressing the importance of winning local marketing battles.

There will certainly be on-the-ground efforts in New Orleans during Super Bowl Week, but "we just couldn’t see anything we could do in New Orleans that would help in Miami or L.A. or wherever," Kelly said. "We continued to scrutinize the value we could get out of the Super Bowl. So, it was how do we bring the Super Bowl to consumers outside of New Orleans? We realized that the stadiums were our best assets, and once we got comfortable with doing something like this at the biggest ones, the rest fell into place."

Whatever risk is associated with this promo -- and anything with this many moving parts has some -- this is a tribute to the influence of both Verizon CMO Leslie Berland and Kelly, who have a combined tenure of less than three years at the tech giant, which has never had any reputation for taking marketing risks.

Momentum Worldwide assisted with the concept and is doing much of the of the heavy lifting (figuratively and literally) for what EVP Sampson Yimer termed "an effort in logistical and operational excellence during Super Bowl, when it’s very hard to grab a headline."

Perhaps acting as an ambassador for every below-the-line marketing shop, Momentum President and CMO Kevin McNulty joked that those producing Super Bowl TV ads have "an easy job and weeks to perfect their them. We’ll go live in 30 markets with thousands of people at the same time. But our clients are always asking us for something that’s never been done before. No one’s asking that from a TV ad."

Tickets for the fan fest are free, but you must be a Verizon customer to enter the sweeps for tickets (at Verizonfanfest.com). Objectives: data capture, customer retention and acquisition (there’s a supporting retail incentive to attract new customers) and evidence to current and potential customers that Verizon can deliver that most au courant marketing term -- access.

Some increased “brand love" might also be nice. Still, Kelly said, soft measures are secondary: “To do something this ambitious, we have to be accountable. Certainly, we’ll distribute all those tickets, but we need to know the real impact on our business.”

Doubtlessly, those scores will be calculated while people are debating the latest USA Today Ad Meter. “Talking the next day about which were the top 10 [Super Bowl] TV commercials, that’s fun,” said McNulty, whose agency produced a dedicated TV ad spot for the fan fest. “But that’s just not what we do.”

Avery Decker has joined Team Playmaker as VP, where he’ll be reunited and report to Matt Grandis and Ross Meltzer, for whom Decker worked at CSM from 2016-2024, ending as director of properties.

Decker, an SBJ New Voices Under 30 honoree in 2022, will be based in NYC and handle properties such as the N.Y. Road Runners and its TCS New York City Marathon, Sporting KC and some F1 experiential work.

“The [marketing] economy looks healthy, but there’s a bunch of inventory and growing demand for those dollars to work harder,” he said.

Old friend Steve Strawbridge says that his priorities as the new president and CEO of Pop Warner include expanding the brand and capturing some of the momentum behind flag football, especially on the girls' side, as that sport heads for a debut at the L.A. Olympics in 2028. 

The new job returns Strawbridge to Philadelphia, where he worked for the Eagles for 11 years before joining the Pro Football Hall of Fame, where he rose to become chief administrative officer.

"I was attracted to working with youth, where the game begins, and there’s really an opportunity to take the [Pop Warner] brand and make it more vibrant with sponsors and partners, as we did at the Hall of Fame," he said.

• Kroenke Sports and Entertainment created a dedicated division to sell sponsorships across its full portfolio for the first time, reports my colleague Ben Fischer. Kroenke Signature Properties will be led by Arsenal FC Commercial Director Olly Dale and Chris Sloan, who currently serves as head of global partnerships for SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park.

• Amazon will sponsor a NASCAR Cup Series team to help spread the word about its new media deal with Prime Video, signing on with Hendrick Motorsports and driver Chase Elliott, reports SBJ's Adam Stern.

• The ATP Tour unveiled a global marketing campaign called “ATP Tour: It All Adds Up,” notes SBJ's Rob Schaefer. The campaign is headlined by five 30-second broadcast/digital ads, which touch on themes the ATP believes “add up” to capture the ethos of the tour.