In September 2021, the LA Rams and automotive partner Porsche teamed up with cornerback Jalen Ramsey and the team’s famous Mariachi Band – which plays at each home game and is unique in the NFL. They created a video-led, digital and social pre-game arrival stunt campaign to ensure the brand, team, the player and the band were front and centre of the pre-match online conversation.
Territory: USA
Agency: In-House
Objective
Porsche’s approach to marketing around its ambassadors and influencers is to ask players themselves to provide the spark for stories and ideas and then to develop campaigns around them. The original insight for this campaign aligned with that approach and began when Ramsey himself told the team how much he loved the music, suits and style of the Mariachi Band that plays at each Rams.
The car company marketers and the agency team then linked that desire with Ramsey’s own status as a stand-out sports star and a fashion leader. The brand’s status as a premium style icon and its aim to find ways of leveraging the band beyond the live game experience led to a campaign called ‘Vamos Rams’. It ran in Hispanic Heritage month to engage LatinX fans and car lovers.
The aim was for Porsche, Ramsey and the Rams to dominate pre-game conversation and generate ‘heavy engagement’ across digital/social channels.
Activation
The activation began with a custom fit Mariachi Band suit tailored specifically for Ramsey for him to wear at the ‘Vamos Rams’ regular season game against Tampa Bay Buccaneers at SoFi Stadium on 29 September. A strand which sought to leverage the trend for fan content surrounding player arrivals at stadiums on game day.
Fans are increasingly interested in what players choose to wear pre-game when they arrive at an arena, ground or stadium and the brand and team set out to leverage this socially through a planned reveal of Ramsey turning up to a game in his custom Mariachi Band suit.
To build out the campaign content, Porsche, the Rams and the player told the backstory behind Ramsey’s sparkling suited arrival. On game day Ramsey drove himself from the team hotel to the stadium in a Porsche that was also wrapped in matching livery accompanied by a camera which recorded him explaining his personal admiration for the band’s style and how it was something that only the Rams had in the NFL.
The social content was spearheaded by a hero spot titled ‘Jalen Ramsey Shows Love To Rams Mariachi Band & LA Culture With His Own Custom Mariachi Suit’ which was posted across Porsche, Rams’ and the player’s personal social platforms (tagging Porsche, the team and the suit) three hours before the start of the game.
FIT OF THE YEAR IN 2021. 🏆@jalenramsey rocked a custom mariachi suit in Week 3. pic.twitter.com/gu6Ek5UPOD
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) March 4, 2022
The campaign was created in-house by a joint Porsche/Rams team led by Rams’ Lexi Vonderlieth (VP of Partnership Marketing), Tyler Potts (Director of Partnership Sales), Jacques McClendon (Director of Player Engagement) and Emma McVay (
Player Marketing Executive) and Porsche’s Ayesha Coker (VP Of Marketing).
Outcome
According to the team and the sponsor, in just 24 hours the activation generated 19m impressions and $350,000 in equivalent media value.