NFL ARTIST
TAKEOVER
“Your people are really dropping the ball!” she declared.
Bewildered, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“This is the biggest platform on the planet and they keep handing us this generic copy to read on-air. It’s such a big missed opportunity!”
The super sharp and cool NFL marketing executive was generously explaining to me that our series Good Morning Football was squandering an amazing opportunity. Every Thursday night during Thursday Night Football, the NFL had been in the habit of giving Good Morning Football the most prime real estate ad space inside the game to promote their show. The commercials around the game cost about $600k for thirty seconds, and the promos inside the games certainly weren’t for sale. Yet, Good Morning Football was being handed that promotional space for free! And they weren’t actually doing much with it. Despite their access to the most exclusive advertising real estate the business had to offer, the producers had done little to capitalize.
“Let’s try to level this up here, folks!” I said to the team at Good Morning Football.
A few weeks after I’d made my plea (but had yet to resolve the issue) a solution nearly fell in my lap. I got wind from all-star music and media consultant Jeff Pollack that legendary rock band U2 had a new album coming out – and they were actively searching for new and exciting ideas for promotion. The band wanted more buzz, more excitement, and more reach.
The idea hit me like a flash of lightning: we could interview Bono for Good Morning Football.
Because new albums usually drop on Friday, we could run the promo for the interview inside Thursday Night Football, generating awareness and excitement for both the album release and the interview the next day. U2 would benefit from the exposure they’d get in front of an audience of +20M viewers on Thursday night, and Good Morning Football would benefit from the clout, interest, and genuinely engaging content they’d get from broadcasting a one-on-one interview with rock legend Bono on their show Friday morning. It was the definition of a win-win.
“But why stop there?” I thought to myself. “Why not figure out more ways to leverage the NFL’s scale as a means of connecting arguably the biggest musical act of all time with even more fans?”
So, we did more.
Although U2 could easily sell a mere snippet of one of their songs for use on-air for $100,000 or more, we knew that these Irishmen weren’t exactly working with us for the money. What they really wanted was to promote their new album and connect with their fans. So we leveraged our biggest asset (the size of our audience) against their biggest asset (the popularity of their music). And it rocked.
For a mere fraction of the price we would have normally paid, we were able to license six songs from U2 — four of their most iconic singles and two songs from the new album — and then use them across the NFL’s linear, social, and digital platforms for the entire week leading up to their album release. It was unheard of!
Better yet, since the games were simulcast on NFLN, our deal with FOX allowed us to transfer our rights to them during the game. That meant since we had the rights to those U2 songs on NFLN, then they could be used inside the game across FOX too. And that meant +20M people wouldn’t just be exposed to a promo for their interview on Good Morning Football the next day, but they would also be exposed to U2’s music all across the game broadcast: their new single, and some of their biggest songs of all time.
On Wednesday of that week, the Good Morning Football’s Kyle Brandt interviewed Bono in a conference room down the hall from the famous Studio 8H in Rockefeller Plaza while the band ran soundcheck for their SNL appearance that weekend. The two had such natural camaraderie, the interview actually ran over, making Bono late for his next obligation. Whups! Fortunately, it didn’t affect our ability to produce the interview. The Good Morning Football team was able to turn the edit around overnight, and the in-game promo ran during Thursday Night Football as scheduled. Excitingly, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman spontaneously commented during their live read on how excited they were to hear the music, and how much they enjoyed Good Morning Football. Touchdown!
After the album dropped Friday morning (and we aired Kyle’s full interview with Bono on GMFB), we were thrilled to find it had premiered at Number One on the Billboard Music Charts — and that we had played a role in helping make that happen. If we could make that big of an impact with U2, we knew we shouldn’t just do one and be done.
So, NFL Artist Takeover was born. Following our success with U2, our team went on to work with Meek Mill, Foo Fighters, The Who, AC/DC, Miley Cyrus, DaBaby, Imagine Dragons, Snoop, Alicia Keys, Queen and others.
This incredibly successful initiative resulted in great music, wonderful relationship-building, and powerful marketing for both the artists and the NFL at a very modest cost. By combining our scale and reach and leveraging these partnerships with various artists, we created a powerful product that was beneficial for all involved.
Foos, DaBaby, and The Who produced by Dallas Hitchcock and the NFL Features team
Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody” produced and directed by Jack Durman
Interviews by all-stars Colleen Wolf, Kyle Brandt, and Mike Silver. The best.