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.
At a glance
- Role
- Within the publishing team: pre-launch pressure test of the full plan, copy QA across every asset doc, collaboration communications and live acceptance tracking, and the post-campaign analysis, with reporting to the publishing lead.
- Key decisions
- Track collaboration acceptance live, per post, rather than reconciling it after the week. Analyze collaborator fit and format together rather than counting tags.
- Selected result
- 296K views, 22.6K engagements, 1,795 shares, and 31 logged collaboration acceptances across 41 pieces and 130 placements.
- Demonstrates
- High-volume campaign coordination, live partner-activation tracking, and analysis that ended in a specific planning recommendation.
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.
| Day | Content |
|---|---|
| Mon | Campaign intro post; first cutdown repost |
| Tue | Two cutdowns / quick-turns |
| Wed | Two cutdowns / quick-turns |
| Thu | Award-nominee carousel; additional cutdown; on-site event short |
| Fri | Three cutdowns land the same day; award-winner post |
| Sat | Final cutdown |
| Mon (following) | Post-game celebration video |
What was mine
- 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.
- Copy QA across every player asset doc. I flagged overclaims, buzzwords, near-duplicate headline structures landing in the same week, and a copy-paste error, all before publication, while enforcing the partnership’s copy standards: partner enters mid-copy and never leads; player and cause centered over brand; captions carry the emotional and proof work, headlines carry the curiosity work.
- 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.
- 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.
| Post | Collaborator stack | Format | Views | Engagements | Eng. rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legacy cutdown | Player + team + his foundation + league legacy program | Long-form cutdown | 91,970 | 10,090 | ~11% |
| Quick turn | Player only at tag time; picked up organically by a third-party page same day | Reactive post | 26,806 | 4,076 | ~15% |
| Award-moment carousel | Player + team + league | Carousel | 19,694 | 844 | ~4% |
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 the format together instead of tagging everyone available, and hold calendar space for reactive posts. The week’s efficiency winner was the one that caught a moment no schedule could have planned, and a plan with no slack in it cannot catch that twice. I delivered this in the post-campaign analysis as the rule to carry into the next cycle. It is a recommendation drawn from the week’s own data, not an outcome I am claiming.