Fox celebrates Tom Brady’s NFL broadcast debut with campaign from Someplace

Fox Sports is ushering in Tom Brady’s next chapter as the lead NFL analyst for the network with a two-part campaign from independent agency Someplace. Fox landed the future Football Hall of Famer in 2022 with a reported 10-year contract worth $375 million. (Brady announced his retirement in early 2022, then returned for a 23rd season. He played in his last NFL game in January 2023.) Football marketing news Tracking Super Bowl, NFL and college brand moves Read more here “We made a big investment in Tom in this booth so we wanted to take a big swing with our marketing as well,” said Robert Gottlieb, president of marketing at Fox Sports. “It’s also been a year since the deal was announced and took a year off and we want to remind folks he’s coming.” The first ad of the campaign, titled “Back to Work,” shows Brady sitting at a desk behind several monitors, a TV on in the background. A sports pundit asks why Brady is getting into the broadcast booth, rather than enjoying his retirement or “laying on a beach getting fat on piña coladas.” Four former versions of Brady appear in full uniforms from everywhere he has played—at Michigan, with the Patriots and the Buccaneers, along with a kid Brady. They encourage him to keep going. The second spot—“You Ready?”—will air later in the season. “We did not want to do comedy and we didn’t want the ‘rookie’ trope” said Gottlieb. “We wanted a different level of weight. Someplace understood the assignment immediately: How do you take an ex-football guy becoming an analyst and make it weighty and emotional?” Someplace was glad that Fox didn’t want to take a comedic route. “It let us jump over the easy stuff, all the ‘fish out of water’ jokes,” said Someplace Chief Creative Officer Ryan O’Rourke, who worked on Nike while with Wieden+Kennedy. Also read: Inside the quiet launch of Someplace Instead, the team landed on using the different Bradys, who O’Rourke dubbed “the figments,” to represent the seven-time Super Bowl champion’s inner thoughts. “We wanted to show his history as he enters a new era,” O’Rourke said. “They also are like Easter eggs. All the figments behave how Brady did in those eras—Michigan has energy and is gung-ho, Patriot Tom is riding the wave, just performing well, and Bucs’ Tom is the veteran. Kid Tom is his pure love of the game, and he actually once shared a picture of himself in a Joe Montana Halloween costume, so he’s also a reference to that.” The campaign will debut today during Fox’s noon Texas-Michigan college football game and air throughout the football season. It will make its NFL debut Sunday, Brady’s first day on the job, during the Dallas Cowboys-Cleveland Browns game. This is the first time Fox Sports has worked with Someplace, which was launched in October 2022 by three former Wieden+Kennedy creatives, O’Rourke, Alberto Ponte and Dan Sheniak, known for working on Nike. The Los Angeles-based agency works with clients in sports apparel, fashion, accessories and mobile sports betting. Fox Sports used to work with Wieden+Kennedy New York, but Gottlieb said that the network does not have an agency of record. Instead, it uses a “grab bag approach” across internal and external agencies. Gottlieb declined to say what other agencies were part of the pitch process for the Brady campaign. Brady teased the campaign on LinkedIn earlier this week with a photo and the caption, “Happy to announce I have a new job. See you Sunday!” The photo shows the backs of the four former Brady players, all following Brady in a suit. Brady’s LinkedIn experience lists “Lead NFL Analyst at FOX Sports” as his most recent job—also an idea from Someplace. “We thought it was a funny idea because it is a sort of back-to-work campaign,” said O’Rourke. “It felt appropriate to launch the campaign on LinkedIn.” Brady will earn $37.5 million annually, according to the New York Post. He made $333 million from his 23-season NFL playing career and about $200 million from off-field deals, Forbes reported. CBS reportedly pays Tony Romo, another former quarterback-turned-analyst, $18 million annually and Hall of Famer Troy Aikman reportedly earns $17.5 million per season from ESPN, according to the New York Post. Brady’s arrival also bumps analyst and former NFL tight end Greg Olsen to the No. 2 team on Fox. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs

Fox celebrates Tom Brady’s NFL broadcast debut with campaign from Someplace

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