Case study · Campaign operations · Super Bowl LX · 2026

The control system behind a six-day Super Bowl week

In the six days around Super Bowl LX, 41 pieces of Walter Payton Man of the Year content went out across 130 placements. My role was to pressure-test the plan, keep partner activation visible as posts went live, and analyze the results post by post. What that analysis found became my recommendation for the next cycle: plan collaborator mix and format together.

The week

The Walter Payton Man of the Year award is announced during Super Bowl week. Stand Together’s program had five player cutdowns plus legends content ready and more built reactively as news broke; five cutdowns landed inside one 48-hour window around the announcement. Every post carried collaboration tags whose acceptance couldn’t be forced, copy tied to award outcomes that weren’t known at writing time, and subject matter where an overclaim or a wrong player detail would be seen at maximum visibility.

What was mine

1. Pre-launch pressure test. I ingested the full week’s plan and reviewed sequences, timing, platform assignments, and tag strategy before anything went live, because conflicts were cheaper to fix on Monday than mid-window.
2. Copy QA across every player asset doc. I caught overclaims, buzzwords, near-duplicate headlines scheduled too close together, and a copy-paste error before publication. I also checked each package against the partnership’s standards: player and cause first, partner later, and a clear division of work between the headline and caption.
3. Collaboration communications and tracking. I drafted the notification templates sent to partner contacts and logged acceptance per post, live, so follow-up pushes went only where a tag was pending and still worth chasing.
4. The post-campaign analysis, built per post rather than as a totals summary.

Results

296,160 views, 22,609 engagements, 1,795 Facebook and Instagram shares, and 31 logged collaboration-tag acceptances across the 41 pieces and 130 placements.

The per-post analysis was the more useful output:

Published campaign work. My role across the week: plan pressure test, copy QA, collaboration tracking, and post-campaign analysis; creative production belonged to the campaign team.

The work on partner channels

The campaign’s content didn’t live only on brand channels. Program-produced video ran on partner channels too, including the New Orleans Saints’:

Demario Davis’ Community Impact | Walter Payton Man of the Year, on the Saints’ channel

And the copy itself, from the Davis celebration package I built for the week:

What a season. What a movement.

For three years, we’ve partnered with the Saints’ Demario Davis, watching him lead on the field and in his community. Demario is one of many NFL players using their platforms to drive real change in their communities. These leaders understand that change doesn’t start at the top: it starts with people closest to the challenge.

Here’s to everyone showing up and proving that this game isn’t just for playmakers — it’s for changemakers.

Authored caption from the published celebration package (Instagram version). Paragraphs were dropped for length; the wording inside each one is quoted exactly as published, punctuation included. Handles are rendered as names. The package carried per-platform adaptations and a contingency version scripted for either award outcome, written before the winner was known.

What I recommended next

Plan the collaborator mix and format together instead of tagging everyone available, and leave room for reactive posts. Ameer Abdullah’s quick-turn post was picked up organically by a third-party page and produced the week’s best engagement rate. No schedule could have predicted that exact moment, but a schedule with no open space could not have used it. I made both points in the post-campaign analysis as recommendations for the next cycle.