 One of the challenges that I that I really found is that oh my god we've created so much content how are we going to get people to see it? I am at the LinkedIn headquarters in the Empire State Building and I'm here with Tim Ellis the CMO of the NFL that's right the National Football League. Nice to be here. Yeah nice to have you here Tim. It's great yeah. Yeah last time I saw you we were in kind together and that was what June and it's September now. So Tim Ellis what's top of mind at the NFL? You know one of the reflections I had when I first came on board was that you know we we can't think of the marketing for the NFL as just being during the season or during our big tent full events is that we have to think about it year-round. We have to continue to build our audiences and we have to sort of find a way to engage people particularly younger people throughout the year and to feed them content and to work with influencers and so forth to just keep it keep the momentum going and one of the things that I saw this year which was super exciting was that during the off season somewhere around the summer where we normally see a dip right in fandom because we we track fandom throughout the year. We normally see a dip and then it comes back up when the season starts we saw no dip right so we saw it we saw it continue sustained it and then when the season started it was a nice big uptick so that's that's important and that was exciting. You were talking about all this cool thing all the cool things that you're doing with social media and your ecosystem 750 million people tell me a little bit about what's going on there. Well you know I took a very close look at social media and the influencers and I found that you know for the most part we were really leveraging our own earned and own channels and they represent about 50 million people which is pretty big yeah most companies would be very happy with 50 million base but then I said well let's let's take a look at the players and let's look at the clubs and let's look at colleges and let's look at all these different you know parts of the NFL ecosystem and and see what that might amount to and before you know it we were at about a count of 750 million right so suddenly you begin to see the potential if you can just find a way to tap into that and to build it and to leverage it and to coordinate properly it's you know it's unlimited potential yeah right so that's what we've have been doing a big part of that is basically working with players as influencers so a lot of what we've been doing is working with the players understanding what are their interests and hobbies and so forth and then we put them together with other influencers and then we serve them up content so they can use it on their on their own channels and it's been very successful in building up their fan bases right building up their audiences you and actually the CMO Kenny Mitchell are both on our DNI council so first of all thank you so much for for being absolutely so important yeah and you were talking about some cool things that you're doing with snap you want to talk about that it's our hundredth season for the NFL if you didn't know that so you know you have that beautiful hundredth logo in all of our stadiums and you know in all the different areas where we have events and so we've developed this AR technology together with snap or they developed I can't say we did but they developed it you lock in on the app with on the on that hundredth logo and then all we just unlock all this great content wow and people are having a blast you know the the amount of content that we have created is ridiculous for this hundredth you know anniversary and so one of the challenges that I that I really found is that oh my god we've created so much content how are we going to get people to see it right I mean like it's it's not just a matter like sending them to one place to take a look at it you really have to find opportunities to constantly feed it and to sort of get people engaged in and talk about it in order to to be successful yeah okay so there's a lot in there right so there's teams there's skills there's technology there's partners like how do you how do you actually think about your team and in trying to put your arms around this content and get it out there in the right way you know the teams the marketing team that's an interesting one I um when I saw what the NFL had to do in terms of like you know engaging in summons this is even re-engaging certain parts of their audience I realized that you know building a modern marketing team today is not what it was even five years ago right I'm finding myself I need experts in music right I need experts in fashion I need people who really understand the gaming world right to bring them in so it's different today it's not just like getting that you know that that person who has an MBA from Wharton to bring them in and maybe has some some time working for PNG or some one of the other big great brands it's about understanding how to build all these strengths in order to be truly successful with a you know a wide breadth of your audience and I wish I had more time to dig in with that and we're going to come back to you soon but before we go what is the best career tip you've ever received or given somebody told me when I back in the early 90s when I was working for a good to be Silverstein just really believing in the power of creative yes of course you have to think about the business you have to think about you know your audiences and and how to communicate to them but you also have to think about what's going to be best for the creative right and that sometimes means you know if the idea stage right and and how that comes to life and is it really a good idea or you know do you just need to put it aside and start all over again which is sometime very stressful particularly if you're on the account side if you're not a creative person how do you really help you have to really put yourself in the shoes of that creative person understand their world and then do everything in your power to help that creative product I thank you so much for stopping by I know it's been a busy week here for you thank you so much for inviting me I always I was love this yeah fantastic it was always fun to see you and thank you all for tuning in to Top of Mind