Since 2009, P&G has been an established, committed, and elite partner of the National Football League, having activated its brands on the national stage of the Big Game.

Ahead of Super Bowl LVII in Phoenix, P&G set out to create the best branded sports content and highlight its four core brands — Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Old Spice, and Tide — while also highlighting their brands’ authentic designation as the "Official Locker Room Products of the NFL." To cut through a crowded landscape of brand activations during one of the biggest live sports moments of the year, P&G knew that their execution had to appeal to both avid and casual NFL fans, while also capturing new audiences in unique places beyond football-centric platforms.

Tapping into an insight that table tennis was already an organic mainstay of NFL locker rooms, P&G brought the first-ever Battle of the Paddles to SB LVII: a double elimination table tennis tournament where select NFL players with ping pong acumen duke it out for the ultimate title. The tournament aired live on Twitch and Amazon for fans beyond those on the ground in Phoenix, providing each player the opportunity to represent their team and take the competition outside of individual locker rooms.

Product integrations came to life in the physical locker room setup at Super Bowl Experience and within Twitch integrations like the "Tide Clean Shot Replay" and "Old Spice Moment of Swagger". The momentum throughout the livestream unlocked deals and exclusive offers on Amazon to viewers throughout the event. The tournament's success has solidified its place in the NFL cultural zeitgeist with future competitions planned next season.

P&G's campaign aimed to increase audience engagement with its primary audience, Millennial males, with those four brands during Super Bowl LVII. The challenge was to create a program that unified Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Old Spice, and Tide while creating an opportunity for each brand to amplify its unique messaging.

The campaign's strategy focused on authenticity, which led to the discovery of a cultural trend among NFL players: the prominence of friendly yet competitive games of table tennis hosted in their respective team locker rooms. With this insight, P&G successfully brought these games to a national stage, leveraging table tennis’ popularity among football stars to create a program that drove consumer engagement and awareness with its brands ahead of Super Bowl LVII.

P&G's first-ever Battle of the Paddles was a masterful example of leveraging their exclusive relationship with the NFL to create an impactful event before the Big Game. By creating a tournament that brought together eight elite NFL players including Trevor Lawrence, Christian McCaffrey, and Jared Goff who moonlight as table tennis virtuosos, P&G was able to capture consumers at the center of all fandom off the field.

The tournament live stream on Twitch from the "P&G Locker Room" footprint showcased individual player lockers with team gear alongside P&G products, creating high-quality content that was attractive to both media and the NFL fan's growing interest in highlighting players off the field and in non-football competitions.

The core component of the event’s digital presence on Twitch paved the way for a partnership with Amazon, which provided viewers of the livestream exclusive deals on P&G products during the event.

The inaugural P&G Battle of the Paddles generated an impressive 1.33 billion total impressions, 584% over the program KPI. Paid media delivered 11.9 million impressions, nearly 6 million more than anticipated. Moreover, the campaign delivered 1 billion earned impressions with a 96% key message pull through rate and 2.6 million impressions on social media with an Instagram engagement rate of over 11%.

The Twitch livestream attracted 3.8 million viewers, more than 9x the platform’s benchmark. The Amazon Live Shopping integration generated 561,000 views, bringing total event views to 4.3 million with an average watch time of 3:50. Sales on Amazon also saw a significant increase, with a 32% rise over the previous 30-day rolling average. Notably, 50% of purchasers from the livestream made their first P&G purchase on Amazon in over a year.

The tournament outperformed same-day programming on major cable networks, including ESPN 2, NBA TV, and MLB Network.