This was the very first thing I worked on for DraftKings. It began by just adding a loose concept around a heavy product demo. I knew I had a long road ahead of me to get to where I wanted this brand to be.

I immediately tried to at least make these start looking better. You can elevate a Brand immediately by speaking through design and how you want to be seen in the world. This was a positive step.

We started to take off with an injection of talent to deliver our messages. We began matching athletes like Jerry Rice to our brand that fit who we wanted to be. We created fully integrated work, including Jerry in paid social and CRM assets as well.

While Jerry worked great for football, Paul Pierce took on the NBA for us. Continuing to be promo led we used his high profile to elevate the brand as a leader in sports.

We also capitalized on the shoot with Paul Pierce to prep for the big Holiday NBA work since Christmas Day always features a slate of games. This enabled us to have fresh work at a key moment on the calendar.

Kevin Hart was a pivotal moment for the brand moving beyond just sports and covering the breadth of verticals we were beginning to develop. Kevin is someone who could connect with a larger audience and DraftKings began to find its voice.

Still trying to make sure we were contextually relevant to each occasion, we paired a combo of athlete/coach talent with Kevin.

If you are talking playoffs, you have to include Jimmy Johnson. And then let Kevin do what he does best. While still being strategically on point we used humor to deliver the message.

The company continued to grow with more verticals like DraftKings Casino and we began involving Kevin in these assets to associate our casino brand with our sports brand.

The company continued to grow with the acquisition of Golden Nugget Online Casino. In order to differentiate between our DraftKings Brand and our new GNOG brand we went back to the celeb playbook and introduced ourselves with the help of Neil Patrick Harris. His skills as a showman made him the perfect compliment to our growing portfolio. 

As betting became legal across more and more states it was finally time to launch our home state of Massachusetts. Here we created a fully integrated campaigned around “Bet Local” using local comedian Lenny Clarke and local athletes like David Ortiz, Zdeno Chara, Aly Raisman, Brian Scalabrine and Boston Bruins anthem singer Todd Angilly. This highly successful launch established DraftKings as the local sportsbook.

At a promotionally driven company bringing fully integrated ideas can help bring an offer to life. Putting something like TDs on sale and treating it like a Black Friday Sale was a great way to execute that. This helped bring bettors to the site for all the latest deals.

When it came to making sure we also promoted being a responsible gambler no song better suit than Kenny Rogers The Gambler. In this anthem we remind the viewer that it is more fun when it is for fun.

We had danced around the Super Bowl with promotional work, hard hitting straight to camera offers and this spot finally started to bring the success we found in the playoffs to the big game. We engaged lots of talent for Kevin’s house party all talking betting.

Last year we strategically wanted to promote our LIVE betting product and who knows being LIVE better than these two. We had come a long way from internal straight promo reads.