During the 2014-15 season, The National Football League (NFL) repeatedly found itself in the headlines for its failure to prevent and adequately respond to acts of violence and domestic abuse by its players. The league needed to show fans and the general public that they were taking and reacting to the accusations and allegations seriously, holding players accountable for their actions off of the field. To make this mission loud and clear, the NFL decided to use its biggest stage, the Super Bowl to bring attention to the issue.

A PSA was created with footage illustrative of a domestic abuse struggle, a recreation of a real 9-1-1 call in which a victim pretends to order a pizza so as not to arouse the suspicion of her nearby abuser. After receiving several unprompted pizza delivery related responses, the 9-1-1 operator picks up on the real reason for the distress call and sends help.

“No More” aired during donated time from the NFL to show their real commitment. The NFL was again in the headlines, but this time it was because they had delivered a powerful message asking viewers to take a pledge to say “No More” to domestic violence and sexual assault. The spot not only sparked an international conversation, with coverage by The Wall Street Journal, Adweek, Ad Age and numerous other media around the world, but also led to a drastic spike in calls to local and national domestic violence hotlines.

Grey followed its non-traditional distribution method, with a counter-intuitive PR strategy. Rather than concentrate on hard news outlets, which normally cover PSAs, the decision was made to promote and publicize the commercial to outlets usually reserved for big-budget celebrity Super Bowl spots—such as the WSJ Ad Blog, Adweek, Ad Age, the Today Show, The View, etc.— a few days before the game and after all the big and traditional Super Bowl advertisers teased and released their spots.

The non-traditional roll-out of the PSA, to marketing and entertainment focused press began a firestorm of PR that then organically spread to traditional news media, and set off a national and international conversation on domestic violence that went on long after the game.

• PR Metrics

o 1,022,170,237 earned media impressions

o $19,643.490 in estimated ad value

• Change in Behavior

o 25% increase in traffic to hotlines

• Media Impact

o 114.4 million viewers tuned into the broadcast of Super Bowl 49

o Social

• Twitter: 16 million impressions Super Bowl Day (vs. 31,700 impressions the previous

Sunday 1/25/15)

• YouTube: Over 7 million views

o Web

• 65% increase in visits to website (nomore.org) (1/9/15-2/9/15 vs. 12/8/14-1/8/15)

• 83.83% increase in unique visitors

• Almost 1 out of every 6 (or 18.6%) visitors to the pledge splash page, took the pledge

• E-mail database

o Increased our e-mail database of subscribers by 116% during the 2014-2015 regular season through Super Bowl week.