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A brand doesn’t need to air an ad during Kansas City Chiefs game to make a huge impact; it just has to know what’s happening in the NFL universe: Right now, there’s Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s rumored relationship.
Swift wasn’t in Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field Oct. 1 when the Eagles beat the Washington Commanders. Neither was Travis Kelce. But Travis’ brother, podcast co-host and commercial co-star—Eagles center Jason Kelce—was playing that night. His mother Donna Kelce, Swift’s luxury box companion a week earlier during a Chiefs-New York Jets game in New Jersey, was also in attendance.
Roughly 48 hours before, State Farm and the team at creative agency Maximum Effort devised a sports marketing master plan involving brand character Jake from State Farm—played by actor Kevin Miles. He’d find Donna Kelce in the crowd, have a conversation with her and take a selfie. He’d also track down Jason Kelce in the tunnel after the game and hang out for a bit before leaving the stadium together.
While Maximum Effort owner Ryan Reynolds experienced Swift’s effect on NFL audiences firsthand—with he and Blake Lively joining Swift, Donna Kelce and Reynolds’ fellow Marvel superheroes Hugh Jackman and Sophie Turner for the Chiefs-Jets matchup—his agency wasn’t certain how that frenzy would extend to an Eagles game until the numbers started piling up.
Hundreds of millions of views, posts and comments later—with many coming in days after the game—the return State Farm’s investment made Jake and the Kelces, in insurance parlance, “The bundle we didn’t know we needed.”
“When a ‘lightning in a bottle’ moment appeared, we acted swiftly,” punned Alyson Griffin, head of marketing at State Farm. “Our collaboration with Maximum Effort allowed us to strategically bring this creative concept to life, seamlessly joining the ongoing conversation in a timely, relevant, and authentic way so our brand was the real winner.”
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Targeting the greater Kelce clan, inserting Jake into the equation and substituting a blank space for Taylor Swift wasn’t exactly a sure thing.
According to analytics firm Sprout Social, conversations on X increased 958% from a week earlier after Taylor Swift appeared at a Chiefs home game against the Chicago Bears Sept. 24. Conversation volume on the site spiked for Chiefs games against the Bears and Jets, but the top keywords and hashtags in those messages were “Taylor Swift,” “#TaylorSwift,” “Taylor” and “Swift.” The NFL itself doesn’t show up until No. 5, with the Kelces not among the top searches at all.
