The woman who transformed the NFL (no... not Taylor)
Retail playbooks; Sara Levinson on the NFL, women, and marketing; and Yale secret societies
Welcome back to letter 2! Firstly, thank you to everyone who read the first letter - your texts and emails were heartwarming and I am grateful!
A number of you have asked how the name Jackiki originated, and more specifically, what “kiki” means.
7-year old me first heard the word in this iconic Glee scene from season 4 which came out in 2009, and now 15 years later, I use it with my friends at school.
According to Google, “A kiki is a social gathering, usually for the purpose of casually ‘kicking back,’ gossiping, and sharing stories. It is historically connected to LGBTQ communities.”
I had a good laugh over this group chat between my godmother’s and my family. To quickly intro them - Laura is my rockstar Godmother and General Counsel at MSG Entertainment and the Sphere, and her husband David is the Chief U.S. Equity Strategist at Goldman Sachs (aka the Goldman guy on CNBC).
Don’t worry guys… I suggested that David refrain from using “kiki” in the workplace.
OK! To the content! Read until the end for the main kiki - an interview with Sara Levinson, ex-President of NFL Properties.
SNIPPETS - RETAIL PLAYBOOKS
Recently, I’ve been thinking about themes in consumer as I prepare for my summer investment internship focused on internet/consumer companies. There are several recurring strategies that I have observed across retail businesses ranging from brick & mortar, to eCommerce, to fast fashion, to luxury, and more. So… in the spirit of this NFL themed letter, I am going to share three interesting plays in the retail playbook! 🏈
Play #1: Large to small store
I read last week that Macy’s is going through a transformation which the company has coined the “Bold New Chapter”. During their earnings call, CEO Tony Spring said that in the next 2-3 years, they plan to close 150 under-performing stores and open 30 new small-format stores. This strategy of closing large stores and opening small stores is not uncommon in retail, and it has three magical effects:
Strategic store placement in high foot traffic areas: On the earnings call, Spring explained that 25% of Macy’s gross square footage accounts for less than 10% of their sales. That’s a pretty concerning statistic and points to how their current large-format stores are unproductive (most Macy’s are in large shopping malls). This is where the secret sauce of the small store format comes in - smaller square footage allows for placement in prime locations that have higher foot traffic. While Spring said that Macy’s plans to remain a majority mall-based company, they can leverage the smaller stores to place in more urban areas and drive sales.
Lean inventory: During my gap year I worked for an eCommerce retail platform and learned that carrying a large inventory is an anchor on profitability. This is because when companies are unable to sell all their inventory within the season, they have to markdown the excess, sometimes selling at a loss. Therefore, replacing large stores with smaller ones = limited space capacity = leaner inventory = faster inventory turns = fewer markdowns = margin increase = profitability increase. Yes, I used to be a math major.
Lower rent and salary expense: Smaller stores mean fewer employees and lower rent costs. Plain and simple, lower costs = higher margins.
These three factors contribute to an increase in sales per sqft and net store productivity (NSP), underscoring the power of the large-to-small store play. Burlington, an off-price retailer (competitor to TJ Maxx and Ross Stores), executed a similar strategy. I tracked their performance for several years after they implemented “Burlington 2.0” - which resulted in an increase in sales/sqft from $226 in 2019 to $310 in 2021. Super impressive.
Play #2: Luxury x Non-Luxury Collab
I recently saw an Instagram ad for a pair of MiuMiu x New Balance shoes. This is a trend I have noticed before - think Nike x Jacquemus or North Face x Gucci. It’s something that catches my attention, mostly because its counter-intuitive for the two to collaborate - different audiences and price points, so could it be a cross-selling play? Well… kind of. The main goal is for luxury brands to expand their audience and raise awareness while keeping the integrity of their brand. Traditionally, luxury and non-luxury live in different realms. If you go to any major city that has a shopping region, you’ll notice how all the luxury brands are located together, separate from non-luxury brands, delineating the two categories and shopping experiences (NYC: uptown 5th ave for lux, downtown 5th ave for non-lux; London: Bond Street for lux, Oxford Street for non-lux). My take is that these collabs are leveraging digital marketing to transcend the traditional physical separation and allow for mingling and cross-selling opportunities. I’ve come across two main types of brand collabs:
Cross-age: This collab pairs an older/more-affluent-demographic-brand with a younger-demographic-brand, each expanding into the other’s customer base. For example, Supreme x Louis Vuitton was a play by LV to reach Supreme’s younger audience. On the other hand, it is a way for older customers to vibe with current fashion trends. Another example is Louis Vuitton x NBA, which included NBA branded LV bags and apparel and catered to the NBA fandom (including younger fans in their teens/20s).
Cross-price: This collab is when luxury companies partner with non-luxury brands to create a collection at a more attainable price point for a broader audience. This allows luxury brands to reach consumers who want a luxury lifestyle but aren’t quite there yet! For example, the Nike x Jacquemus collab is priced slightly higher than regular Nike products, but lower than standalone Jacquemus, creating a new ‘luxury-reach’ customer group. Or the Karl Lagerfeld x H&M collab, which was so popular that customers were limited to 15 mins in dressing rooms. Finally, my favorite is the Missoni x Target collab from 2011 - I want these espresso cups baddd.
Play #3: Exclusivity
This play entails creating an air of exclusivity around a product, which in turn drives demand because consumers feel special owning that product. Hermes, a French family-owned luxury brand, is the master of the exclusivity play. Every Birkin and Kelly bag (now flagship products) is handmade in France. Despite 125,000 Birkin bags being made per year by craftsmen, the long waitlist is months and even years (!) to become the proud owner of a Birkin. The exclusivity of the Birkin and Kelly generates so much organic hype that Hermes doesn’t even market their products (they are the only luxury brand that doesn’t invest in marketing). What’s crazy is that some shops don’t even display the bags, so the demand is for a bag that shoppers can’t even see.
Another example of this play is Supreme artificially limiting its supply to create a sense of exclusivity. The way their model works is every Thursday at 11am EST, the company ‘drops’ new exclusive items on their website. With limited amount of each item, it’s a race for shoppers to get their hands on Supreme pieces. I remember in high school, at 11am on Thursdays, every guy would be sitting in the ‘Den’ (my high school’s hang out spot/mini cafe) on their laptop, credit card ready, credentials memorized, ready to type as fast as they could to get their orders in. Within seconds of the drop, all items were sold out.
THE MAIN KIKI - How Sara Levinson discovered and leveraged the NFL’s hidden asset: the female fans
It’s been a month since I, and most of America, watched the Superbowl. Now when I say ‘watched the Superbowl’, I really mean I watched the half-time show and the commercials, and I can’t lie… I did watch the last play when the Chiefs clinched their fourth Superbowl win (as much as I don’t understand football, it was pretty sick). Yet, if you ask a bunch of my female friends what the highlight of the game was, they will likely say when the camera panned to Taylor Swift chugging a beer.
The Taylor Swift effect has been all the talk these days. Her attendance at major Chiefs games has boosted NFL viewership, especially amongst her fan base. There is no doubt that Taylor knows how to mobilize women. In fact, she can mobilize the entire economy if she performs with David Kostin as shown in this graphic from the Financial Times!
But… way before Taylor (30 years to be exact), there was Sara Levinson, the trailblazing first female President of NFL Properties, who unveiled the NFL’s female audience and transformed their marketing strategy to cater to women, developing them from casual viewers into super-fans.
One of my fondest memories with Sara is from 2010 when she gifted me one of the original Harley Davidson Barbies for my 8th birthday. Long before Barbie made her feminist comeback - there was Sara - who had multiple leadership roles at MTV Networks, including expanding MTV around the world, to becoming the first female executive at the NFL, and a decades long board director at Harley Davidson and Macy’s.
When the NFL hired Sara from MTV in 1994, the whispers going around the entirely male board room were: “Who is this woman from MTV, and why is she telling us how to market football?” Funnily enough, Sara was not a huge football fan when she got to the NFL, but the one thing that fascinated her was the fandom. She told me about how her stepson’s uncle was buried with a Giants football pennant in his coffin, and she wanted to understand what made people so fanatical about their allegiance to their NFL team. She asked to see any research about viewership, to which the NFL responded that they had no primary research.
“The only research they had was something that showed they were the most popular spectator sport. But that wasn’t the why, and there were no consumer insights or marketing department. So I approached it as I would any consumer product - marketing 101. Let’s do some research.”
Sara got to work, and way ahead of today’s business focus on data, she designed and conducted the first full scale NFL research project. The project cost $1 million ($2.1 million adjusted for inflation!) and included 1,000 in-home 30-minute-interviews to collect data points on when, how, and why viewers become fans.
The findings were a revolutionary revelation.
“Of the entire fan base, 40% were women.”
This was a game-changer. Sara recalls sharing the statistics with the commissioner, and the first reaction was some hesitation: “Wait… where did you get that number again?” One can imagine how reporting this number back to an all-male board room left many of them with mouths agape. Here was the first female executive finally shining a light on this huge proportion of the audience that the NFL had missed.
After some more segmentation, Sara realized that on the continuum of fandom, the 40% female viewers fell into the “casual viewer” bucket, vis-a-vis the “die-hard fan” male demographic. While men watched football for the game, women loved football mostly for the community aspect: they grew up watching games with their dads - it was the one time a week when the whole family gathered around the TV to watch the same thing - (and they liked the tight pants the players were wearing😝)!
Sara’s goal when setting up a marketing strategy was to create a fan development program that would bring female fans down the continuum. “Instead of creating new fans, you are getting the casual fans and developing them to be more avid.” She started campaigns that addressed women’s questions about football - for example a program that explained the 101 of football plays. She invested in on-air commercials featuring women talking about football. She also jump-started partnerships with organizations supporting women’s causes including a breast cancer campaign, making the NFL relatable for women. One of her most recognizable campaigns featured players thanking their moms, an ode to the strong female figures in our lives - the first of its time as many ‘thanking mom’ commercials soon followed suit.
Sara managed to transform this “antithetical” statistic to something that viewers and programmers embraced, blazing a new trail in the sports industry and how to market to women. “This was hidden knowledge that we were able to uncover, and we used it to inform how we showed up as a brand.” Fast forward 30 years, Taylor Swift is implementing the Sara Levinson 2.0, making it cool for women and young girls to watch football.
Big thanks to Sara for making the time for a Jackiki interview - you are my role model!! Also, check out this video of the 1958 Superbowl half-time show - what would they think of Usher(!)…
THINGS I’M LOVING RIGHT NOW
This GAP “Linen Moves” campaign featuring Tyla - it shows off their new linen collection on the dancers from Jungle’s Back On 74 music video that went viral. It’s chic and classy, all the dancers look amazing, and it is such a genius way of capitalizing off of a pop culture hit. The Gap website is reinventing the eCommerce landing page, displaying dynamic look books that include clips of the dancers grooving in their linen (click on link and scroll down a bit).
SKIMS pajamas. My friend got me a pair for my birthday and wow I want to be buried in these. While I usually change first thing in the morning, I have been lounging in my pj’s until I have to walk out the door at 11am for class. Kim is onto something with this fabric. Also linking back to the retail plays, SKIMS recently did a collab with the NBA.
Yale secret society tap has started… an exciting time for juniors. What I know thus far:
A mysterious envelope with a wax seal is slid under your door at random times of the day.
Inside the envelope is a cryptic message asking if you’re interested in their society and an email address to confirm interest.
If ‘interested’, they email you to meet somewhere on campus at a weirdly specific time (e.g. 10:03pm or 9:57pm, but never just 10:00 pm) for an interview.
For my first interview, I was asked to bring something that would impress. After some thought, I brought a fish (dead) in a Ziploc bag and convinced them that I caught it myself just a few days before the interview in the Quinnipiac River (I don’t know how to fish). They believed me 😄. We moved on from the fish to the rest of the interview, but before I left, I broke it to them that I was totally messing with them and that I bought the fish at the grocery store. They asked if they could keep it, and I gave it to them since having a freshly caught fish is a treat when you are eating in the dining halls!
That’s a wrap on letter 2! Comment your thoughts/questions/reactions and can’t wait to kiki in the next letter (and happy spring break to all my fellow Yalies).
One last thing, my dad, an anti-trust lawyer at the European Commission, and formerly an officer of the Italian government’s Guardia di Finanza (who prosecute mafia bosses), is also a cartoonist! I am going to end every letter with a cartoon drawn by Paolo. Grazie papa <3
What a great read! You bring such an awesome perspective to so many topics and the main Kiki was amazing
Learning so much, Jackie! So impressed!
You’re unbelievable- full time Yale student and you still have time for this! 💪💪💪