HOME OPENER

Brand

Industry

Background

Brands in sports sign athletes to their roster in hopes of using that player's stardom to elevate the brand. However, when signing players, there's always the issue of working around team and league restrictions when highlighting the partnership with the player through marketing efforts.

After signing Saquon Barkley to the C4 roster, the brand's next challenge was to find a creative way to highlight the partnership with the Super Bowl-winning running back that connected the brand to the passionate team's fan base without team or league sponsorship.

Leading up to the event, we collaborated with popular Philly-based creators, such as BenJammins and Rossi Takes, to create teaser content, sparking fans' interests, encouraging fans to CALL SAQUON on a hotline where they could hear directly from him.

Collab posts were created with creators calling the hotline to hear what Saquon and C4 had going on for the home opener, in effort to get fans excited.

Around the city, we had flyers and pressure washing ads in high-traffic locations to push more calls to the hotline.

Leveraging athletes & influencers, we sent the limited-edition shirts to over 80 people, including people like Kevin Hart, DeSean Jackson, Michael Vick, and LeSean McCoy, all with strong Philadelphia ties, who posted with the shirt online, pushing their fans to our DTC page where they could purchase the shirt.

We worked with Saquon and his foundation, The Michael Ann & Saquon Barkley Hope Foundation, to ensure that all proceeds from the sales of the shirt would be donated to the foundation to help their efforts to empower youth and families in the city.

We ensured the partnership with the foundation was called out on DTC, social, and voiced with our talent and influencers.

Idea

Anyone who follows the NFL knows that the Philadelphia Eagles have the most passionate fans in all of sports. Coming off a 2024 season in which the team won the Super Bowl with Saquon Barkley as the NFL's leading rusher, we knew the home opener was going to be a massive moment for the fans, and the perfect moment to activate and hit the streets.

With the team kicking off the 2025 season, with Thursday Night Football, at home against the bitter rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, we created the 'Saquon Barkley Home Opener,' a grassroots marketing program that leveraged mobile marketing, OOH, influencers, and apparel in a mission to show C4 Energy wasn't just energizing Saquon, but also the city.

On game day, knowing the city would be flowing with fans wearing team jerseys and bragging about the game, we made sure to connect with as many fans as possible, partnering with iconic locations like Geno's Steaks, Iron Hill Brewery, Chickies & Pete's, and 7-Eleven to bring our branded C4 x Saquon Barkley truck to their locations to hand out limited-edition t-shirts, eye blacks and free energy drinks to fans.

At each location, we partnered with local content creators like popular streamer Raud to live-stream his entire experience at our activation to over 100,000 of his viewers.

To elevate this live stream even more, we secured field tickets for Raud to meet Saquon Barkley before kick-off, who both posted with the limited-edition shirt.

To get more awareness around our partnership, we secured OOH media throughout the city to deepen our program and make sure the entire city knew which energy drink was fueling the league's best running back.

Results

4.5M social impressions on IG
- 1.5K new followers gained
- 65K visits to the page
95 total posts from athletes and creators
- Earning 16M+ impressions
- $1M earned media value
425 total shirts sold on DTC
- Highest apparel item ever sold on DTC
- $12K from sales donated to charity
- 93% NTB rate on DTC
1,800+ fans called the Saquon hotline
- 700+ voicemails to Saquon