Ahead of Taylor Swift’s second appearance at a Kansas City Chiefs NFL game, NBCUniversal marketing executives Jennifer Storms and David Giardino were already expecting the game to bring in significant ratings — but for a reason entirely unrelated to Swift’s surprise attendance.
As Storms, entertainment and sports chief marketing officer, and Giardino, senior director of marketing strategy, explained, that day’s matchup between the Chiefs and the New York Jets Jets was slated to be the first time NFL star quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Rodgers would face off — until Rodgers tore his ACL in his season opener.
Enter Taylor Swift. The superstar has been attending games and cheering on her rumored boyfriend Travis Kelce, a tight end for Kansas City, and subsequently skyrocketing ratings for NBC for weeks now.
Storms and Giardino, in conversation at the Variety Studio presented by Canva at Advertising Week, discussed their approach to capitalizing on Swift’s new connection to the NFL to bring in viewers for Sunday Night Football. For that Chiefs-Jets game, they pivoted their plans to incorporate her into the programming.
Giardino said, “We didn’t even know for sure exactly where the relationship was going. Or if she was going to be there at MetLife on that Sunday night. But we said to ourselves, ‘We have to at least find a way to wink at this right, we have to find a way to integrate this because we know this is the key storyline of the NFL season now, but we knew that there was going to be some incremental fans interested in that piece of it.’ And then going into Sunday night, that was really how that execution came to life.”
Storms also discussed their decision to bring Swift’s music into Sunday Night Football. “It was also a game in New York. So it made a lot of sense with her music — ‘Welcome to New York.’ To organically bring that into play, we maybe would have done that regardless of her being [involved]. So it worked out very well for us.”
Storms and Giardino also discussed the upcoming 2024 Olympics, which will take place in Paris next year — a venue that the network is trying its best to lean into.
Storms called the host city of Paris “a superstar” in and of itself; the team is capitalizing on the popularity of the French city to draw in audiences.
Storms spoke to how they will appeal to a younger generation: “When you look at the younger audiences, Gen Z and millennials, their most desired location to travel in the future is Paris, Milan, and LA. We have the next three Olympics in Paris, Milan, and Los Angeles.”
