Food, fans, and feel-good causes: How brands are activating in New Orleans around the Super Bowl

About 70,000 people attend the Super Bowl each year, and Caesar’s Superdome in New Orleans, the site of this year’s game, can hold up to 76,468 fans.

But brands activating around the big game, including Verizon, Hellmann’s, and Dove, are looking to connect with far more than the average stadium capacity’s audience. From food festivities to social good–motivated events, a variety of brands are leaning into the experiential marketing boom and taking their efforts to the ground.

“Our target is to have a bigger event than the Super Bowl,” Nick Kelly, head of partnerships at Verizon, told Marketing Brew. “Super Bowl is at 70-some-thousand. We’d like to be at 80+.”

To NOLA and beyond

When the Verizon team began planning for this year’s Super Bowl campaign back in September, it wanted to “take a national platform like the Super Bowl and make it feel local,” Kelly said. So was born the brand’s first-ever Super Bowl FanFest, a free event targeted toward families and young people that brings game-day celebrations to stadiums and venues in 30 different NFL markets, including New Orleans.

“We feel pretty good about this, but it definitely is a far larger lift than I think any of us anticipated,” Kelly said. “But the dividends will hopefully pay off immediately coming out of the Super Bowl.”

Super Bowl FanFest includes experiences like on-field access and locker-room tours at participating NFL stadiums, local food and entertainment vendors, and appearances from NFL stars, which Kelly said was key to customizing each of the 30 events depending on location.

In Miami, for example, the event will feature Latin music, small local businesses, and restaurants “that are endemic to that market that you wouldn’t be getting in New York City or Chicago,” Kelly said, while the LA market, home to two NFL teams, will feature the Mariachi Rams band as well as LA Chargers players. Super Bowl host city New Orleans will be home to the House of Verizon activation, which, according to Kelly, will combine aspects of fashion, music, and food while partnering with nightlife brands like Tao to function as a party hub.

“If you went to all 30 [FanFest events], you would feel like they were, all 30, wildly different,” Kelly said.

Though Hellmann’s isn’t activating across quite as many locations, the mayo brand set its sights on both New Orleans and the other city that won’t be sleeping on game night: New York.

Tied to its Super Bowl ad, a When Harry Met Sally homage airing during the game, Hellmann’s worked with Katz’s Deli to offer the “What She’s Having” turkey-sandwich package and Harry’s pastrami sandwich, both featuring Hellmann’s mayo.

Hellmann’s also hosted a preview party for influencers and media at Katz’s, where attendees got to try the sandwich, meet the ad’s director, and receive their own version of Harry’s iconic cable-knit sweater from the movie and the ad. In New Orleans, the brand will be sponsoring Guy Fieri’s tailgate and serving up the “What She’s Having” sandwich while also partnering with the Food Recovery Network to help recover food waste at the game and tailgates.

Though New York and New Orleans are heightened experiences, Katz’s and Hellmann’s also made the sandwich package available for nationwide shipping for a limited time, and the collaboration is designed to appeal to everyone, Jessica Grigoriou, SVP of marketing, condiments at Unilever, told us.

“We know Katz’s has awareness beyond New York. It’s kind of one of these timeless institutions, and this was the first time that Harry and Sally, but also Meg and Billy, had come back together in 35 years at Katz’s Deli,” Grigoriou told Marketing Brew. “We were just really excited to bring that together and create this moment that we think will bring a lot of joy to a lot of people.”

Food for thought, stars for company

In the Big Easy itself, there’s plenty of food and Cajun culture to go around, and several brands are leaning into the city’s unique flavors.

PepsiCo has claimed a spot on Decatur Street along the route for the Super Bowl Host Committee’s first-ever parade, with a Chips n’ Sips Quarter activation, according to Kyle Ahrendsen, director of sports marketing and partnerships at Frito-Lay. At the event, Doritos will host a tattoo parlor and a holographic Chester Cheetah will be telling fortunes and reading tarot cards.The brand will also serve New Orleans-inspired food featuring Frito-Lay products like Tostitos and Cheetos, plus traditional gumbo and a “craw chip” boil, the brand’s version of a crawfish boil that replaces potatoes with Lay’s chips, he said.

“Tostitos is traditionally a brand that is…tied to a lot of Tex-Mex cuisine,” Ahrendsen told Marketing Brew. “When you think about the aspect of bringing it into authentic New Orleans culture, where there’s a lot of diversity with the way that they bring about their food and the way that they like to consume. We had to make sure that we were tapping into local chefs to say, ‘What are authentic ways that we could bring our products into this space?’”

Keeping the local food scene authentic is also important to the GenYouth team, a nonprofit that partners with the league to put on an annual Taste of the NFL event. Maureen Bausch, chief development officer at GenYouth, told Marketing Brew that the event is designed to showcase local culture and brand partners while keeping things fresh for attendees.

“It’s really important that we have a wide variety of food,” Bausch said.“We don’t like to have duplicates.”

Bausch said the Taste of the NFL also focuses on offering attendees experiences that go beyond food, like interactions with famous athletes, like Mark “Mighty Mouse” McMillian.

“They want to have an interactive experience with players—that’s why they’re at the Super Bowl,” Bausch said.

Greater good

Though many brands show up at the big game looking to give their fans an exciting experience, the Super Bowl also offers an opportunity for brands and organizations to focus on social causes.

The Taste of the NFL serves as a fundraiser, with net proceeds supporting “school grants that are provided in the host Super Bowl market and in all 32 NFL markets,” according to Lisa Travatello, VP of integrated communications at GenYouth.

GenYouth’s mission is to end food insecurity for kids, a cause that the organization says brings brands together. “From a nonprofit perspective, I think that’s why the sponsors [like Quaker, Frito-Lay, and the PepsiCo Foundation] get involved, too,” Bausch said.

Other causes may also get a Super Bowl-sized spotlight, like Dove’s Body Confident Sport program, created in partnership with Nike to address the phenomenon of girls dropping out of sports at double the rate of boys by age 14 due to low body confidence.

This year, Dove partnered with Sports Illustrated to create a special edition of the magazine profiling 10 girl athletes, with Honor Smoke, a 10-year-old wrestler from the Tonawanda Reservation, as the cover star. In NOLA, the brand will also put on a pep rally featuring women athletes including Billie Jean King, Tara Davis-Woodhall, Sabrina Ionescu, and Odessa Jenkins.

“We’re really focusing on body confidence and providing tools for young girls, young athletes, and coaches to help make sports a more inclusive environment,” Kathryn Fernandez, head of purpose and engagement at Dove North America, said. “Partnering with Sports Illustrated gives us an opportunity to… really spotlight real girls and inspire that young girl to be able to look at that and see somebody else that looks like her.”