• by Sarah Mahoney , 3 hours ago

 
National Cheeseburger Day is coming, and Kraft Singles wants to make sure it’s the name on everyone’s burger, tapping into fantasy football fever on social media. The new campaignstars Andy Reid, the cheeseburger-obsessed coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. It comes to life this week to mark Sept. 18, National Cheeseburger Day, with a Kansas City takeover, including billboards across the city and in the power & light district.

The ad quickly expands into a social-first effort that highlights Reid’s "Bet you a cheeseburger" catchphrase for a sweepstakes.

Football -- and this partnership with the NFL -- is a major priority for the brand. Increasingly, that means building campaigns that extend far beyond the TV broadcast and into the culture of football, with fantasy football helping make conversations last all week long. “During football season, we move a lot of product, and cheeseburgers are one of our top use cases,”  Keenan White, associate director, brand communications at Kraft Heinz, tells Marketing Daily.

He’s not kidding: The company says it sells 77 million pounds of Kraft Singles cheese, the equivalent weight of 175 Boeing 747s, every football season. For CPG brands, White adds, football is still the only game in town, with the NFL dominating live TV events.

That makes tailgating season an essential audience. “We're on a mission to not just show that it's not Game Day without a burger, but that it's not a cheeseburger without Kraft Singles.”

Andy Reid makes a perfect partner. Besides being perhaps the most recognizable coach in the NFL, the burly, mustachioed head of the Kansas City Chiefs is a cheeseburger fanatic. “He even gives them out to his players as rewards,” says White.

And while Reid appears in many ads -- even nibbling on Patrick Mahomes' chicken “nuggies” in commercials for State Farm Insurance -- White says Kraft didn’t worry about him being overexposed.

“We get it,” White says. “He is a big guy with a big appetite. But this is distinctly Kraft Singles work, and just a true, authentic fit with Andy -- he really is a cheeseburger fanatic. And he hasn’t done a partnership like this with a CPG brand [before].”

The campaign invites fans into a weekly “pick ‘em”-style contest. In  “the Single Greatest Call,” fans can either GO FOR IT or CALL AN AUDIBLE on Coach Reid’s picks. Winners get paid in Kraft Singles and have a shot at a Super Bowl ticket. “We absolutely love this,” White says. “It’s a way for us to behave endemically in NFL fan culture.”

The Kitchen, the company’s in-house ad agency, created the campaign. The effort follows Kraft Heinz’s new marketing blueprint: spending more money on its winningest brands, and spending more of that cheddar on social.

Besides plenty of content rolling out throughout the season, the campaign is designed to play into the social-media-driven behavior of fantasy football fans. Adds White: “We’re using UGC to drive that groundswell of conversation.”