Nationwide x NFL Tails & Touchdowns

ABOUT THIS ENTRY

Nationwide’s Tails & Touchdowns promotion was an NFL‑themed fan engagement campaign that invited pet parents to share football themed photos of their pets, along with a short story about why gamedays with their pet(s) is special to them.

Entrants had the chance to win one of fourteen weekly prizes, with one lucky pet parent scoring a trip to Super Bowl LX in the Bay Area. The experience was anchored by a custom photo‑sharing hub and supported by a fully integrated media mix spanning email, social, app and portal placements, and paid media. 

The program deepened engagement with existing members while also driving new business through leads and binds, ultimately delivering valuable first‑party insights by connecting football fandom and pet love into a fun, measurable path to quotes and referrals.

How does this represent "Excellence in Engagement"?

Excellence in engagement for us wasn’t just about big numbers; it was about turning 8,300+ entries into 8,300+ first-party stories we can actually use. Every Tails & Touchdowns submission asked fans to share what makes game days with their pets special—and that gave us a living dataset on what members and consumers value.

Through a pure referral-channel lens, this set a new benchmark: instead of guessing at “the right incentive,” we now have thousands of real answers. We can see which teams people rally around, what they like to do with their pets, where they take them, and what life stages they’re in—and tie that back to performance and referral behavior. That’s a different level of engagement than clicks or likes; it’s an emotional signal we can quantify.

This work shows the industry a way to evolve sweepstakes and sponsorships from one-off stunts into always-on insight engines. It proves you can deliver a high-energy, fan-first experience and walk away with structured, scalable intelligence that reshapes how you segment, what you offer, and how you show up for fans going forward.

Objective

Tails & Touchdowns began as a Referral Marketing initiative to support Nationwide’s pet insurance line of business after a tough year of profitability pressure and retention headwinds. We needed more than another offer—we needed a fan-first sponsorship activation that would cut through the noise, prove the value of the Nationwide x NFL partnership, and give members and consumers something they could genuinely rally behind with us.

Our objectives were to:

• Strengthen the NFL × Nationwide Pet partnership by launching a co-branded tentpole that lived where fans actually are—UGC, social, and mobile—rather than just in signage.
• Elevate Nationwide’s brand visibility and trust in pet insurance by showing up in a culturally relevant NFL moment that celebrates real pet-family game-day rituals, not just product.
• Turn fandom into performance for the referral channel by engaging members and consumers in an NFL-themed, photo-share contest that could drive leads, quotes, referrals, and bound policies.
• Create a repeatable insight engine by capturing thousands of first-party stories about how, where, and with whom fans watch football with their pets, to shape future offers and partnerships.

Strategy & Execution

We built our strategy around how modern sports fans actually behave: always on, mobile-first, and socially driven. Tails & Touchdowns centered on a UGC contest because, as a pet insurer, we know fans love taking—and sharing—photos of their pets. The experience was intentionally lightweight: a mobile-optimized photo hub where fans could upload a pic, add a short story, and submit in under a minute. Our Super Bowl LX grand-prize winner literally completed his entry on his phone while waiting at the vet, which is exactly how we designed it to work.

Social was the front door, with NFL-branded creative, short-form video, and weekly winner spotlights turning the contest into an ongoing community moment instead of a one-off promo. Paid and organic social drove volume, while email, app, and portal placements met fans where they already interact with Nationwide. On email, we used Salesforce Marketing Cloud’s Send Time Optimization to reach fans at their individual peak engagement windows, then layered in high-intent confirmation and remarketing journeys to push them from “cute photo” to quotes and referrals.

Organizations

• Nationwide

  Precision Services Group

Links

•   Website

Featured

• NA

Credits

Zakiya Wright
Consultant, Marketing Management
Nationwide

Susan Niese
Specialist, Creative Services
Nationwide

Nicholas Brown
Specialist, Creative Services
Nationwide

Jane Wooldridge
Manager, Creative Services
Nationwide

Leo Tran
Specialist, Marketing Management
Nationwide

Joanna Ard
Director, Marketing & Omnichannel Strategy
Precision Services Group

Diana Lopez
Client Success Manager
Precision Services Group

Tom Dupuis
VP, Operations
Precision Services Group

Saim Diaz-Stranberg
Software Engineer
Precision Services Group

David Choung
Software Engineer
Precision Services Group

Todd Kubli
Director, Marketing Management
Nationwide

Helen Gonzalez
Consultant, Digital Marketing
Nationwide