NBC Sports embarked on a three-month campaign to drive awareness for Sunday Night Football and promote five in-person Match Up events in select cities around the country beginning with the NFL season opener. The events embraced the social/dating opportunities, camaraderie and fun of watching NFL football in a bar/lounge setting with friends and the possibility of meeting a future partner. Zim Strategies was tasked to arrange and conduct a two-prong, limited influencer marketing and national media relations campaign that tapped into the 21-35 year old casual sports, lifestyle, and entertainment audience, to drive engagement, visibility and buzz for the Match Up events and drive tune-in to Sunday Night Football.

Based on the budget, Zim Strategies identified and secured two prominent crossover influencers to be the faces of the campaign: Camille Kostek (partner of NFL star Rob Gronkowski) and WWE superstar Mike "The Miz" Mizanin. The influencers created and shared a limited number of personalized posts and video content on their platforms disseminating key campaign messages. The campaign yielded more than 495,000 video views, and a 14.77% engagement rate. The agency further leveraged the influencers to secure coverage in non-endemic outlets, extending Sunday Night Football's reach to lifestyle, and entertainment audiences. Major media outlets such as PEOPLE, the New York Post, The Blast and Yahoo ran stories which garnered 3.579 Billion media impressions (unfortunately global news events, such as the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, impacted early campaign efforts, leading to some lost media opportunities). The Match Up events were packed, and tune-in for games had double digit percentage increases YOY with several hitting multi-year highs in viewership.

The campaign successfully bridged the gap between traditional sports marketing and lifestyle-driven outreach. By integrating influencer partnerships and targeted media strategies, Zim Strategies demonstrated that the client’s goal of blending cultural relevance with sports-related events can elevate brand visibility and drive engagement.

A limited 3 month project, initiated at August 15, 2022 to drive awareness for NBC’s Sunday Night Football and the network’s five IRL Match Up events in select cities beginning with season opener.

● PR strategy infused major national earned media with the marketing power and influence of celebrity personalities.

● To drive awareness and buzz among fans, the approach focused on placing stories outside the traditional sports/football realm, bringing NBC Sports into lifestyle, culture and entertainment

● Our approach was conducted in two phases:

The first phase of our campaign was to contract with multimedia crossover phenoms: WWE superstar Mike “The Miz” Mizanin and rising TV host and social media influencer Camille Kostek (and significant other of Rob Gronkowski). This proved successful as both promoted video and written posts via their social platforms.

■ Additionally, we connected to Friday Night Lights star Zach Gilford who contributed to our national media coverage with his first person comments about the importance of bringing people together over Sunday Night Football.

2. The second phase was achieving a select number of targeted national coverage leveraging The Miz and Camille that generated storylines for media at all levels outside football and into lifestyle and entertainment genres.

Influencer Results:

For NBC SNF Match Up, we partnered with crossover media stars WWE’s The Miz and TV host and social media influencer Camille Kostek, who is also the significant other to NFL star Rob Gronkowski, to promote the SNF games and Match Up activations on their most followed platform, Instagram.

Below are combined results*:

Total video views
495,300+

Total likes
34,847

Total comments
465

Mike “The Miz” Mizanin - 4M Followers

5 Posts:

●24,453 Likes

●330 Comments

5 Reels:

●485,000 Total Views

Post: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjLlqtxJLl0/?hl=en

*Results as of October 14, 2022

Camille Kostek -1M Followers

1 Post:

●10,394 Likes

●125 Comments

1 Reel:

●10,300 Total Views

Post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CjJ2zx7jUiG/?hl=en

*Results as of October 14, 2022

MEDIA RESULTS

- Use of notable personalities to break into lifestyle media

- We made progress with non-endemic media in the lifestyle space through use of celebrity influencers

- Celebrity influencers disseminated key messages through social and were compelling assets to lock in national

media.

NOTE: There was potential for additional coverage during the first weeks of the kick-off, as we secured national placements, but unfortunately due to global news events, certain opportunities were lost due to the demands of covering such events (i.e., Queen Elizabeth II passing the day of our first event and subsequent focus).

PEOPLE.com