In May, Tom Brady finally confirmed when exactly he would begin his new career as an analyst for the NFL on Fox, starting with the Dallas Cowboys versus the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, September 8. Back in 2022, Fox Sports gave Brady a ten-year $375 million contract. According to the New York Times’ Athletic, Brady spent the following year working closely with Fox Sports NFL executive producer Brad Zager, lead announcer Kevin Burkhardt, other famous former footballers-turned-talkers such as Terry Bradshaw, and many others on Fox Sports’ NFL team while getting ready to make his debut. In June, Brady got some practice in by calling the UFL championship for Fox.
“With Brady — the seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback widely considered the greatest player in the history of the game and now in possession of the most lucrative known sports commentator contract of all time — Fox Sports has tried to publicly temper expectations for what is probably the most anticipated TV game analyst debut in history,” the Athletic wrote.
With all of that as background, Fox Sports’ marketing department had a tricky job ahead of it. It had to produce a campaign that met – not underpromised or overshot – fans’ expectations for Brady’s arrival. Fox Sports’ Bill Battin senior VP, on-air promotions, talked to Spotlight about how he, his team and their agency and production partners worked to achieve that balance while producing a spot that they hoped would surprise viewers.
Spotlight: Let’s just cut to the chase: what's it like to work with the GOAT, Tom Brady?
Battin: I think it’s safe to say that for anybody who's worked with him, there's just not many times you get to be and work with somebody of his stature. He was very, very cool during the shoot we did with him and very open to anything we suggested. And he was very excited about the direction we went with the campaign.
Spotlight: The theme of the campaign is “Back to Work.” Can you talk about how you guys developed it and how you thought about it with Tom in mind?
Battin: I think that the expectation for somebody of his stature would be the comedic route. That is kind of the low-hanging fruit. But we really wanted to challenge ourselves creatively, and consider what we could do that's a little bit more unexpected and not down the middle of the lane. This is where we landed with our agency partners at Someplace. [Editor’s note: Someplace was founded by Ryan O’Rourke, Alberto Ponte and Daniel Sheniak, who formerly worked on the Nike account for Wieden + Kennedy Portland.] It was a challenge for them as well to get away from that instinct to go funny and to instead land with something a little bit more inspirational and unexpected, and that really speaks to what Tom's all about.
Spotlight: How long did you have with Tom to do this campaign?
Battin: We filmed for one day, so that was a pretty full day. There was not a lot of downtime at all. We filmed two spots with him, and it was very tight, but we were able to get through it. Our production team was Superprime Films [Editor’s note: Superprime Films represents such directors as Oscar winner Damien Chazelle (La La Land, First Man) and recent Palme d’Or winner Sean Baker for Anora] with whom we've worked for years. Mark Romanek is this legendary director along with Jeff Cronenweth, who's another cinematographer. We had a really top-notch crew, and our visual effects company A52 is really best in class. It was a crazy day, and it was a crazy pre-production leading up to it, but having all of us rowing the same direction made it run a lot smoother than it really should have.
Spotlight: Last year, you guys did a campaign for the 30th anniversary of the NFL on Fox. Will you do something similar this year? Would you say that this year’s Brady campaign is sort of the analog to that campaign, in terms of it being your big NFL push for the season?
Battin: It’s just a completely different approach than we took last year. Last year was great, we had a great creative team to film that, and our talent was really funny. This year is much more just a different approach, much more sincere and much more motivating.
Spotlight: When you're picking creative teams to work with – like in this case, Someplace and Superprime – what factors do you look for?
Battin: I think it depends on the genre we want to hit. So the group we worked with last year, Special Group, they're terrific. They do a lot of really funny, really well produced things. That's what we were looking for last year. This year, obviously, we were looking for something a little different. So it's just based on what you're looking to do genre-wise, and what kind of message you want to send.
Then we highlight a couple of agencies, meet with them, take pitches – or sometimes we just award the campaign straight away to the agency – and then we go from there, and we grind together on the creative and the script and the concept. Once that's locked in, we pitch it to our CEO, and in this case, to Tom. And once that's approved, then we move into production, and then you select the director and the production company who helps you execute it. And that's how we landed with Mark and the Superprime team. Mark is really good at making this kind of thing come to life.
A lot of the agencies are really experienced in this. They've been doing this for a long time, and they have a short list of directors they've worked with that can deliver. Same with the visual effects. We don't want to have this great stuff on film then have a visual effects team that can't execute what it needs to be to take it to that next level, that feature film type of visual effects that we're looking for.
Spotlight: One thing that occurs to me is since it's the NFL, how much marketing really needs to be done? Everyone knows what it is and knows they want to watch it.
Battin: That's why we take this brand approach. We have this great team assembled to broadcast our games. We feel that how we present the broadcast is as good as it gets in the industry. And so let's build on our brand. The NFL on Fox is such a strong brand we don't necessarily need to talk about it, but the last couple years, we felt like going the brand route and building on our NFL on Fox brand as a whole, and then augmenting that with the real specific team and tune-in spots. It's really about keeping the brand front and center throughout the season.
Spotlight: In light of the way the NFL is sort of dividing and conquering with games also on Amazon Prime or on NBC or CBS, there are a lot of places to see games. I think it makes sense to build your own brand around your offering and your personalities.
I have been asking this question a lot lately but TV marketers have always said something to the effect of ‘use your own air.’ When it comes to marketing the NFL, is your own air the best place to reach people?
Battin: The NFL is just the king when it comes to reaching that many eyes each week. And beyond that, we have the baseball post-season, college football, our new studio show lineup and so forth. Each week we can put all of that in front of 25, even 30 million people. It’s just gold.
