The Challenge: Reigniting 30 Years of Sponsorship Fatigue (On a Shoestring Budget)

My creative roots are in college football: I helped build the ESPN promo unit during the rise of College GameDay and collaborated with icons like Lee Corso, Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler. So, when Outback needed a bold direction for a 30-year bowl sponsorship that had flatlined on engagement and ROI, it felt like more than a brief—it felt like coming home to solve a problem I inherently understood.

The risk was immense: we had to solve a high-stakes sponsorship fatigue problem (leadership questioning ROI) with a shoestring production budget of less than $20K and a few weeks to execute. Traditional QSR polish was impossible; the solution demanded authentic, culturally relevant creative.

 

The Pitch & Action: Directing Authentic Voice and Humor

I championed the creative concept that sports fans crave authenticity, not polish. The strategy was to bypass traditional advertising and use "cultural truth" by tapping the most authentic voices in college football: the legendary coaches.

• Conceptual Authority: I conceived and sold the "Steak Is for Winners" concept—a bite-sized wisdom series that framed steak as the ultimate reward for winning at life. This allowed us to ditch tired food tropes and focus on personality.

• Talent Persuasion & Production Craft: I personally wrote and directed 15 quick-hit commercials featuring coaching legends (Spurrier, Mack Brown, Lee Corso), not just as talent but as tone-setters. We achieved this by shooting at three locations over two weeks with a lean crew, stretching every dollar to prove that big ideas don't require big budgets.

• End-to-End Execution: The content was strategically distributed across ESPN broadcast, social, and in-store displays, aligning with bowl season and Fantasy Football peaks to ensure maximum cultural resonance and low-cost amplification.

 

The ROI: Authenticity Drives Unprecedented Engagement

The campaign proved that high-concept, authentic storytelling is exponentially more potent than high-budget polish, generating results unheard of in the QSR category:

• Unprecedented Engagement: Achieved a 99% social video completion rate—almost unheard of in QSR and a direct validation of the campaign's perfect cultural fit.

• Earned Media & Brand Sentiment: Featured organically in SportsCenter segments and across ESPN Bowl Game coverage, with fans calling it the "funniest Outback campaign ever."

• Business Impact: Reinvigorated the NCAA partnership, elevating brand sentiment and successfully proving the ROI, all while executing on a sub-$20K production budget.