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Football for infants: NFL Newborn Fan Club indoctrinates your baby early

sportsgrindadmin

During the Super Bowl, the NFL released a lot of commercials. One commercial, however, was memorable and set the stage for a program the NFL instituted this year. The commercial featured babies born roughly nine months after their parents’ favorite team won the Super Bowl. Any real football fan knows the celebrations that occur after your team wins the Super Bowl. This creative way to talk about an aspect of celebration that gets overlooked was witty and inventive, and it brought a lot of laughs!

The NFL has launched an extensive campaign to bring more families into the NFL. They have expanded their product offers to women and begun to make NFL facilities and events more family-friendly. Their latest initiative is to start NFL fandom as early as possible with the Newborn Fan Club.

All about the babies

The NFL Newborn Fan Club was launched in April as a partnership between the NFL, Pampers and Gerber Childrenswear. Through the club, moms and dads can start their babies in fandom as early as possible, with digital birth certificates from their favorite teams, special offers from Pampers for their product and a sweepstakes to enter to win free clothes from Gerber Childrenswear. Through signup, the NFL will also offer special discounts to the NFL shop for team merchandise especially for your baby and online and email content specific to new parents and their bundles of joy.

Why this is smart

There are so many different programs that the NFL offers for different types of fans. Veterans and active-duty military members. Women. Kids. The NFL has tapped into the vast resource of formulating exclusive content for the type of fan they are servicing. Through the Newborn Fan Club, the NFL has done two things:

• Found a way to market to a demographic of fans that are ready to deck out their newest addition in the latest team gear
• Created a way for kids once they have grown out of their newborn stage to immediately be transitioned to the 32 Kids Clubs offered by each NFL franchise

This keeps NFL fans engaged and tailors content. As fans venture out to support their favorite teams, the different NFL groups give them the ability to get content to the right people. For instance, it is a rule that when attending NFL games, all bags must be transparent. This information was dispersed in several different ways, but primarily through the NFL Women’s Clubs, since those are the groups most affected by the security change. One thing that is excluded from the NFL’s clear bag policy, however, is diaper bags. Diaper bags can be taken into NFL games without being transparent, but they must be small and only carry what is needed to get through one game. The NFL Womens Club is a great resource to disperse that information because you have a group and a fanbase that has already reported that they have a need for things all about babies.

Football is family

Rob Gronkowski and his brother did a commercial for the NFL to start the “Football is Family” campaign. As that campaign has expanded, they have addressed many dynamics that are well known within families who are fans. “The House Divided” is a common theme for commercials because many families support different teams, sometimes in the same division. One particular commercial addressed the “Who gets the kids?” dynamic when a husband and wife get packages from their different teams – say, the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears. In some families, football is not just a sport – it is a rite of passage that each family member must pass through. With the NFL Newborn Fan Club, the NFL ensures the babies are covered just as much as the grownups.

If you have a newborn or infant to shop for, take some time to look at the Newborn Fan Club on www.nfl.com. Sign up and browse through the NFL’s expanded selections of merchandise for infants. From bottles and bibs to tyke-sized jerseys, you can find what you are looking for in your littlest family member’s size, then receive prime content specifically with them in mind. This way, in the next family football picture, your little fan will be decked out in the gear of the team they will grow to love.