The Kansas City Chiefs’ CMO Talks Taylor Swift, That Hallmark Movie, and The Team’s Plan for World Domination
If you have heard about Taylor Swiftyou’ve almost certainly also heard of her boyfriend, the Kansas City Chiefs Travis Kelce. It was a publicity dream for the football team and one that could never have been planned. However, Lara Krugthe team’s first marketing director, has been tasked with turning the Team Leaders into, in her words, “the world’s team,” and she’s capitalizing on a plot ripped from a romance novel . love story between Kelce and Swiftthe team’s best regular-season record (currently the best overall record in the NFL), their quest for a Super Bowl three-peat, this week’s debut of a Chief-themed Hallmark Christmas moviesand more to make sure that happens.
“Some things in life can’t be scripted, but you can certainly take a chance and run with it,” Krug recently said. Vanity fair in a bar high above Times Square.
Since joining the Chiefs organization in 2021, Krug—who has experience at Anheuser-Busch InBev, L’Oréal USA and Avon—has focused on enhancing the team’s profile on a global scale. Is Krug banking on that winning record and high-profile romance to fuel football’s metaphorical marketing? No, but she doesn’t Are not uses those incidental facts to her advantage.
“I want nothing more than absolute happiness in life,” she said measuredly, noting that Kelce and Swift brought new eyes to the group. Remember: The Swift’s first appearance at Arrowhead Stadium, Kelce jerseys for sale according to the report sudden increase of up to 400%. It’s one of those things you definitely can’t write about.
However, what can be scripted is a movie. The Chiefs organization has partnered with Hallmark to Holiday Touchdown: The Chiefs’ Love Storya feature-length tale of love and conflict of business interests between a multi-generational Chiefs fan (her) and a Chiefs fan-engaged employee who has a penchant for the Grinchy ( he). There’s eggnog, there’s a magic hat, there’s a surprising understanding of the Meaning of Christmas and what it means to truly love the Chiefs, and of course there’s a happy ending. The film will debut on the Hallmark Channel on November 30, one day after the Chiefs play the Oakland Raiders, a game that will stream on Amazon Prime on Black Friday, another win for Krug and her team that. It’s also likely that the two-day program will please extended families gathering for the holiday. The benches didn’t even know what was coming to them.
The idea for the film “started with our Chiefs playoff campaign last year,” Krug said.
“We created the idea that the playoffs [are] the best holiday of the year,” she said. “It has a lot of the meaning of all the other holidays. People dress up, eat too much, there are fireworks—everything. We think, the postseason as a holiday campaign was born and in that, showing the cultural relevance of love stories and romance and all that, how about What better way to tell a holiday story than a holiday movie?
In January, the organization released The trailer has the Hallmark code for the made-up movie Love footballand following their Super Bowl win, the Chiefs’ second straight Hallmark (coincidentally also based in Kansas City) issued a call to take casual social media flirtations to the next level and make everything official.
“We had a meeting with them and at the end of the meeting we all looked at each other and they said, ‘So do you want to make it into a movie?’ And we said, ‘We were waiting for you to ask.’”
The increased interest in the NFL and the Chiefs in particular cannot be ignored after Swift became a fixture in the VIP ranks. Krug is aiming to cater to a new wave of female-skewing, casual fans. Still Krug says she hasn’t personally met the singer (“I love from afar, and she’s amazing,” she says) and the organization is extremely careful when approaching their famous fans. (Swift representatives did not respond Vanity fairrequest comment.)
“We consider her part of the Chiefdom,” Krug said. “We respect her as a fan, we respect them as a couple in their personal lives. We tried really hard to really care about her experience. So last season we never played her song in the stadium. We never showed her on our screens. I know the media has obviously shown her, this is beyond our control, it’s the networks that are showing her. We tried to really respect her as a fan. Hopefully she sees it as a place that welcomes her back. What she has done so well will bring attention to the sport, to the fans, and to a fan base that perhaps never saw it as such. one of our priority target audiences.”
And in the spirit of putting fans first for Krug and her team, “It was our responsibility to make sure that all of these new fans came to her, because [Kelce]for coaches [Andy Reid]because Patrick [Mahomes]For a million other reasons, we give them opportunities that make them want to stay.”
