ARCHIVEToyota Brings Brock Purdy Into the Living Room for Game Day
How Toyota and Brock Purdy Turn Game Day Prep Into a Brand Statement Toyota's "Weekend Plans" is a...
Applebee's Bets on the NFL to Win Football Season 2024
Applebee's launched 'We're serving up the NFL this season!' in September 2024, a United States food-and-drink campaign created by Grey New York that combines a limited-time 50¢ boneless wings offer with appearances by NFL stars Brock Purdy, Saquon Barkley, and Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell to position the brand as the definitive game-day dining destination for watch parties and dine-in guests alike.
The campaign arrives at a landmark moment for the brand. Applebee's entered the 2024 NFL season as the league's Official Grill + Bar Sponsor, making this its first football season carrying that designation. The strategic weight of that partnership is felt immediately in the creative: rather than a single television spot, the campaign unfolds across a multi-format content architecture that includes 15- and 30-second versions airing on national television, Football Night in America, and dedicated NFL programming, alongside digital channels. At its centre is a recurring content series called Pre-Seasoning, framed as a season premiere in which rookie NFL figures join 'team Applebee's' — a conceit that maps the language of football onto the brand's kitchen and dining culture.
The value proposition is direct and clearly priced. America's Favorite Boneless Wings are promoted at 50¢ each for a limited time, available both for dine-in and To-Go ordering, ensuring the offer reaches fans watching at a restaurant and those hosting watch parties at home across the USA. The campaign also promotes $10 NFL Bucket Cocktails, broadening the occasion from a food deal into a full game-day spend proposition. Applebee's parent company is Dine Brands Global, Inc., which also owns and franchises IHOP, giving the network operational scale to activate the promotion across a large footprint of franchise locations in the United States.
Applebee's built this campaign on a well-established consumer truth: the NFL season is the most commercially potent recurring cultural event in the United States. As reported by Marketing Dive, Applebee's CMO described the NFL sponsorship not as a vehicle for television spots alone but as a platform for a broader campaign strategy — one designed to generate relevance across every touchpoint where fans engage with football, from the living room to the restaurant booth.
The strategic logic is grounded in the To-Go and watch-party occasion. By pricing boneless wings at 50¢ each and making the offer redeemable for both dine-in and To-Go orders, Applebee's removes friction at the exact moment consumers are choosing where to source food for a group gathering. This positions the brand not merely as a casual-dining chain but as a provisioner of communal football experiences — a meaningful identity shift in a competitive fast-casual and casual-dining landscape. In the United States, Applebee's competes directly with Chili's and Buffalo Wild Wings, both of which actively court the sports-viewing audience with wing-focused promotions and in-restaurant viewing environments. Buffalo Wild Wings in particular has long made sports viewing a core brand pillar, making Applebee's decision to secure an official NFL sponsorship a direct competitive counter-move designed to claim institutional legitimacy that a generic sports bar positioning cannot replicate.
The fast-casual restaurant market, while distinct from Applebee's casual-dining category, signals the broader appetite for affordable, convenient food occasions: according to Growthmarketreports.com, the global fast-casual restaurant market was valued at approximately $148.5 billion in 2024 with a projected compound annual growth rate of 9.0% through 2030. In the United States specifically, the intersection of sports culture and food-service spending makes football season one of the highest-volume promotional windows available to any restaurant brand, and Applebee's 2024 NFL campaign is constructed explicitly to capture that window.
Director Guy Shelmerdine of production company Smuggler helmed the campaign, shooting inside an actual Applebee's restaurant to ground the content in the brand's physical reality rather than a fabricated set, according to Muse by Clio. That choice of location is a deliberate act of authenticity: the production environment reinforces the campaign's central argument that Applebee's restaurants are genuine game-day destinations, not aspirational facsimiles of one.
The creative execution leans into the Pre-Seasoning series format with a tone that sits between a sports documentary and a comedic sketch — a register that allows NFL personalities Brock Purdy, Saquon Barkley, and Dan Campbell to play exaggerated versions of their public personas without undermining the value messaging at the campaign's core. The 'season premiere' framing treats Applebee's marketing content with the same structural language as a returning television property, creating a reason for audiences to return to the series rather than encounter a single-exposure advertisement.
A telling production detail, reported by Muse by Clio, comes from a spokesperson identified only by the surname Yashinsky, whose first name and exact role were not publicly documented at time of publication. Yashinsky recalled that when the team asked San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy to throw props toward the camera at full strength, Purdy was initially reluctant, concerned about breaking equipment — but ultimately delivered the throw. That anecdote illustrates the production team's approach: staging moments of genuine athletic instinct within a controlled commercial environment to produce content that reads as spontaneous rather than scripted. The campaign ran across 15- and 30-second formats, demonstrating that the creative was engineered for broadcast efficiency as well as the longer-form appetite of digital and NFL programming audiences. Production credits beyond Shelmerdine and Smuggler are not fully documented in publicly available sources.
The campaign generated more than 2.3 million YouTube views, according to the Clapboard archive. That figure represents meaningful earned attention for a food-and-drink promotion anchored to a seasonal promotional window, and it reflects the draw of the three featured NFL personalities — Brock Purdy, Saquon Barkley, and Dan Campbell — in amplifying organic reach beyond paid media placements.
No verified performance data for campaign-specific sales lift, incremental To-Go orders, restaurant traffic change, or market-share movement is publicly available for 'We're serving up the NFL this season!' at time of publication. The absence of published commercial metrics is common for restaurant-chain promotional campaigns, where results are typically reported in aggregate quarterly earnings rather than attributed to individual activations.
Structurally, the campaign exhibits several markers of effectiveness. The 50¢ boneless wings offer provides a concrete, price-anchored call to action that reduces decision complexity for consumers. The To-Go mechanic extends the campaign's commercial reach beyond restaurant capacity, capturing demand from watch-party occasions that would otherwise bypass the brand entirely. The Pre-Seasoning series format creates repeat-exposure potential across the NFL season rather than relying on a single creative impression. No verified major industry awards — including Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clios, Webby, or WARC — have been confirmed for this campaign. Clapboard rates 'We're serving up the NFL this season!' at 63 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that executes its commercial brief with competence and cultural relevance while leaving creative and strategic headroom unexplored.
Applebee's 'We're serving up the NFL this season!' is a 2024 United States food-and-drink campaign created by Grey New York. It promotes 50¢ boneless wings for a limited time alongside To-Go and dine-in options for game day, featuring NFL personalities Brock Purdy, Saquon Barkley, and Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell in a recurring content series called Pre-Seasoning.
The campaign features three NFL figures. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley, and Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell appear across the Pre-Seasoning content series, each joining 'team Applebee's' in a creative format that frames the brand's football season promotion as a sporting season premiere.
Guy Shelmerdine of production company Smuggler directed the campaign. According to Muse by Clio, the shoot took place inside an actual Applebee's restaurant, a location choice that reinforces the brand's positioning as a genuine game-day dining destination rather than a stylised advertising environment disconnected from the real customer experience.
Applebee's became the NFL's Official Grill + Bar Sponsor in 2024. As reported by Marketing Dive, Applebee's CMO positioned the sponsorship as a platform for a campaign that extends beyond television spots, activating across national TV, Football Night in America, digital channels, and NFL programming to reach fans throughout the football season.
The campaign generated more than 2.3 million YouTube views, according to the Clapboard archive. No verified sales-lift or traffic data is publicly available. Clapboard rates the campaign 63 out of 100, reflecting solid commercial execution and cultural relevance tied to the NFL sponsorship, with creative headroom remaining relative to the scale of the platform secured.
Applebee's promoted two primary offers during the 2024 football season. America's Favorite Boneless Wings were available at 50¢ each for a limited time, redeemable for both dine-in and To-Go orders. The campaign also featured $10 NFL Bucket Cocktails, broadening the game-day proposition beyond food to cover a fuller watch-party spending occasion across the United States.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
