Gallo CMO on Barefoot wine’s NFL moms, wives partnership and Super Bowl plans

In a wine market that’s become all about finding new fans, Gallo’s Barefoot brand has found an effective teammate in the NFL. The partnership began in 2022, when Barefoot replaced Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Babe Wine as the league’s official wine sponsor. While Babe was later discontinued, Barefoot is enjoying a boost from its football deal—it brought in 2 million new consumers during the 2023-24 football season, according to the brand. Super Bowl commercials Tracking the latest brand and agency plans Click here That’s helped make Barefoot the top brand in recruiting new wine drinkers and the best-selling U.S. wine brand, according to Circana figures supplied by the brand. Total U.S. sales in 2024 were around $555 million, executives said. The NFL reaches around a couple hundred million fans, according to league figures proved by the brand, and is growing with Gen Z, women and diverse audiences, all key wine constituencies. The so-called “Swift Lift”—driven by Taylor Swift’s romance with Kansas City Chief Travis Kelce—helped drive even greater popularity with women beginning last season. And Barefoot is benefiting as it introduces new football fans to wine. Barefoot’s pursuit of female fans has involved partnering with famous moms and wives of NFL players. The decorated gymnast Simone Biles, whose husband, Jonathan Owens, plays for the Chicago Bears, this season promoted an NFL game trip as part of a promotion called the Barefoot BandWAGon Box. Last year, Donna Kelce, mother of NFL star Travis and the football-retired Jason, presented a series of Super Bowl party-hosting tips on behalf of the brand. Barefoot is not airing a Super Bowl commercial, but intends to be visible in New Orleans, where the Big Game is being played on Feb. 9. It will appear at the Caesars Superdome during Super Bowl LIX, as well as at the New Orleans Saints hospitality space and NFLPA events. Barefoot will have a branded space at the NFL Super Bowl Experience fan fest offering wine samples, interactive games and photo-ops, according to the brand. In the below interview, Stephanie Gallo, chief marketing officer for E&J Gallo, discusses how Barefoot and the NFL got together, what’s ailing the wine business and the importance of leveraging NFL assets at retail. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. How did the partnership between Barefoot and the NFL start? The sponsorship became available when the wine category became open as a partner for the NFL. (Editor’s note: AB InBev was the league’s first wine partner in a deal that began in 2019; it came as a result of the brewer’s long-standing NFL sponsorship for its beers.) Our founders always believed that it’s important to endeavor constantly to win new friends for wine, and we couldn’t think of a better opportunity to partner with an organization that has such a large audience, to begin to welcome new friends into the wine category. It was a great opportunity for us to begin expanding the wine aperture outside of traditional occasions that wine is normally associated with. Did you have to move some spending around to make this happen? Like anything, it involved tradeoffs. We felt this opportunity was unique, but we had to move some things away from experiential in order to activate with the NFL. Was there any reticence within the organization to working with the NFL? Or was it a matter of looking at the NFL numbers? We looked at it but we had to move pretty quickly. We signed the contract in June and began to activate in the fall of 2022. I was just really proud of the team to take advantage of the opportunity and to make the most of it in the time that we had. And so, yes, when an opportunity like this presents itself, I think it’s really important that we capitalize. The Bandwagon Box evolved to the BandWAGon this year. What was behind that? The WAG concept was coined by the British media with soccer players and their girlfriends. The term really gained momentum last year with the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift relationship—WAGs became part of the U.S. pop culture lexicon in full force last year. We felt what was really important for Barefoot was to capitalize on pop culture, to begin to amplify our partnership in a way that can be relevant to our consumers and to the emerging the emerging wine consumer in general. And it’s been fun for us as an organization to be able to insert ourselves in a way that’s authentic with pop culture and what’s going on. In what other significant ways have you activated your NFL partnership? A major thing for our organization is to be able to activate within the four walls of the store, capitalizing on the NFL and the excitement the NFL brings to our retail partners. We’ve also partnered with local teams, because we think that local teams drive relevance with key consumers in key markets. And the other way that we have activated is at the Super Bowl, with on-site experiences. We also partner with creators, that’s a part of the ecosystem we try to leverage as much as possible. Did you consider a Super Bowl commercial? It was never part of it for us. We’ve tried to be as efficient as possible, and for us doing a Super Bowl ad was never a prerequisite for engaging in the partnership. For us and for our audience, partnering with creators like we’re going to do for the Super Bowl, is an easy way to be very targeted, and for our audience in terms of how they want to see content show up. 2024 was not a great year for wine [down 3.5% in dollars and 5.3% in volume, according to NielsenIQ]. How did Barefoot perform? Barefoot trends in general are performing better than the overall category trends. I think that when you look at what our challenges are in the wine industry, it’s always around, how do we make wine relevant to the next generation of consumers? And making wine relevant to the next generation of consumers is really challenging ourselves to show up in places where consumers are actually consuming alcohol beverages and wine. Wine has always won with the traditional mealtime occasion. And so part of why we wanted to embark upon this partnership is to begin to insert wine into other alcohol beverage occasions. What can brands learn from the Gallo-NFL experience? For any category that wants to become relevant, I think it’s important to challenge themselves to consider unexpected partnerships. It opens up the aperture of being able to introduce new fan bases to your category and to your brand. I think that in many ways, partnering with the NFL has made us better as an organization. When you partner with world-class organizations, it makes us better, and we’re learning a lot. It’s just been a fun partnership in general.

Gallo CMO on Barefoot wine’s NFL moms, wives partnership and Super Bowl plans

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