Even despite this year’s Super Bowl loss, it has been a great couple of years for pop megastar Taylor Swift and her NFL tight end boyfriend Travis Kelce — and the myriad of brands they endorse.
“The only thing more reliable than the Chiefs making the playoffs, and usually the Super Bowl, this decade is that Travis and Taylor will prove to be manna for marketers,” says David Berkowitz, founder of the AI Marketers Guild and a longtime advertising industry veteran.
The pairing of Swift, the biggest pop star in the world at the moment (and perhaps ever) and Kelce, a handsome, future Hall of Famer with undeniable charm, is the kind of dream romance that typically only exists in storybooks — Or Taylor Swift songs. Her tune “You Belong with Me,” with the lyrics, “I'm on the bleachers / Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find me,” seems to have prophesied their relationship.
It’s been a dream come true for their brands, too, as the attention paid to Travis and Taylor has created a halo effect, generating untold amounts of awareness for their brand partners and driving huge boosts in engagement.
The halo effect has been so potent, in fact, that it’s turned the other members of the Kelce family into media darlings of their own. When Donna Kelce, Travis’ mother, sat next to Jake From State Farm, the insurance company’s pitchman, at a Chiefs game in 2023, the marketing stunt went viral, increasing online engagement for the brand 15 percent.
In early 2024, Donna Kelce was named Ziploc’s first ever Chief Leftover Officer. Later that year, General Mills launched a campaign featuring Donna; her other son and Travis’ brother, Jason Kelce (a former NFL star in his own right); and Jason’s wife, Kylie Kelce. During the 2024 Super Bowl, Frank’s RedHot aired a commercial with Jason as its spokesman that 5.29 billion earned media impressions and grew the brand’s email distribution list by 60 percent. That fall, Donna and her two sons appeared in a Campbell’s Chunky Soup campaign that was nearly 300 percent more effective at driving engagement than other Campbell’s ads.
Data shows that the Kelce pitchmen are effective at reaching consumers outside of their core male demographic. Frank’s Red Hot and Campbell’s Chunky Soup are typically male-oriented brands, but both have experienced marked increases in engagement with women, according to an analysis conducted by purchase platform Attain — likely a cause of Swifties being tuned into the Kelce family.
Anyone who has watched a Kansas City Chiefs game the past two years has been bombarded with coverage of Travis Kelce and Swift, both during the game and in the commercial breaks. Viewers would watch Kelce, the most prominent receiving threat on the Chiefs’ offense the past two seasons, catch touchdowns and celebrate on the field and see Swift celebrating alongside Kelce’s mother, Donna, in a luxury stadium viewing booth.
Then, during commercial breaks, there they were again. Swift, in a promotion for her record-setting Eras tour, was the spokeswoman for a Capital One campaign starting in 2022 that featured heavily during NFL games, and Chiefs games specifically. Swift's Capital One ad was 113 percent better at driving online engagement than the standard credit ad on TV.
Likewise, Travis Kelce’s State Farm ads were also conveniently placed in Chiefs games, giving football fans and Swifties a double dose of the beloved celebrity couple. Kelce appeared in more NFL commercials than another celebrity in the 2023-2024 season, in fact, appearing 375 times during commercial breaks, narrowly edging out his teammate Patrick Mahomes, who had 341 appearances. Kelce’s pitchman-ing has had a similarly positive effect on his partner brands, Attain data shows. Subway and Papa John’s, two brands Kelce endorses and both prominent NFL advertisers, saw exceptionally strong engagement among 25 to 34-year-olds, the core demographic for Travis and Taylor content.
Capital One and State Farm buying commercial time alongside Chiefs games was a case study in brands using a viral pop culture moment to extend the reach and effectiveness of their advertising, says Matt Heindl, group vice president for social content and engagement strategy at digital agency Razorfish.
“From a marketing and PR standpoint, it’s a textbook case study: they’ve essentially merged two hyper-engaged fanbases, funneled them into primetime viewership, and now capitalize on that captive audience with perfectly placed endorsements—right in the one medium where young fans of both will actually sit through commercials,” Heindl says.
Brands trying to replicate this performance will likely have a hard time. The Travis-Taylor effect is the once-in-a-generation viral moment marketers can typically only ever dream of, and is nearly impossible to replicate on its own. But the success of Kelce and Swift and their brand partners does show the potency of being plugged into the culture, especially in a dispersed media landscape where brands often struggle to break through the noise.
It’s uncertain whether the Travis-Taylor effect will continue, especially considering the Chiefs’ blowout loss in the Super Bowl and speculation that Kelce might retire. Until then, though, the NFL, and its commercial airtime, belongs to them.
In the words of Swift: “This is our place, we make the rules.”
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