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How the NFL Uses AI to Personalize Fan Experiences | Adobe for Business

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How the NFL Uses AI to Personalize Fan Experiences | Adobe for Business

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171 segments

0:00

Experience Maker of the Year,

0:01

congratulations!

0:03

How does it feel?

0:03

Thank you, it's like, feel like honored.

0:06

Thanks to Adobe.

0:07

Really, it's a great team effort.

0:09

We did in the last four years, we did a

0:11

lot of failures, a lot of success.

0:13

But leadership, all the time

0:15

was there to support us.

0:17

You lead martech at the NFL

0:18

What does that entail?

0:20

Working with all 32

0:21

clubs plus league level,

0:23

each and every club have

0:23

their own martech stack.

0:25

32 clubs, some of the most

0:26

passionate fans of any sport,

0:29

of any league.

0:30

Four years back, like we can

0:31

say all 32 clubs plus league

0:34

were decentralized ecosystem, right?

0:36

They are operating as a local, they are

0:38

building their own space.

0:40

So what we are losing there, like,

0:44

one club did good,

0:45

is not going and

0:45

learning to the other club.

0:47

And what league is doing is not getting

0:50

passed to the club as well.

0:52

And which is ending up like over

0:54

communication with the fans.

0:55

You ended up maybe five clubs

0:58

and you are receiving five communications

0:59

from each and every club every day.

1:01

We selected Adobe as an optimizer

1:03

and an orchestration layer

1:05

and orchestrate that at the

1:07

league level with all 32 clubs.

1:09

We integrated with their

1:10

ecosystem, bring it into the league.

1:14

We want the fans to get the right

1:15

experience at the right

1:16

time, with the right context.

1:18

We put the fan in the center and not

1:20

doing that as an

1:21

audience batch and blast.

1:23

We are targeting

1:23

individual fans with the right message.

1:26

We reduced the 30% of over communication

1:28

to the fans by going with this approach.

1:31

We need a lot of

1:32

personalization, a lot of content as well.

1:34

A lot of local content in

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the different languages.

1:36

So we start building a GenAI system

1:38

privately within our NFL world,

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working with Adobe on the,

1:43

Firefly and other products.

1:45

And we start developing our own models,

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own agents, along with Adobe

1:51

to give that domestic and

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the localized content to them.

1:54

We need a million of

1:55

variations of the content

1:57

Each and every social media have their

1:58

own type of content, what they needed.

2:02

With the agentic AI, what we are doing,

2:03

we are generating the

2:04

content at scale.

2:06

One click, it will generate a million of

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variations of that image

2:09

It will go to the AJO for the activation.

2:12

It will go to the social media for the

2:14

activation directly.

2:14

I mean, that's scale right there.

2:17

It sounds like to me it's using agentic

2:19

to meet that personalized content,

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per fan.

2:22

We have all Adobe products.

2:25

We have the AEP,

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Adobe Journey Manager,

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Adobe Journey Optimizer, AJO.

2:32

We are using the CJA

2:33

Customer Journey Analytics.

2:34

We are using the Adobe

2:35

Analytics for the tracking.

2:37

We are using the Mix Modeler for the

2:39

attribution at the end

2:40

because we want to do the right

2:41

attribution to each and every channel.

2:43

Then Creative Cloud side.

2:44

We are using the Firefly,

2:45

Frame.io and Adobe Express.

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Like the Workfront for

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managing this entire process.

2:50

when we are working with so many

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products, so many platforms,

2:54

we need a very good processing time.

2:56

We are having Workfront also run this

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entire process together.

2:59

We are seeing the success from the club

3:01

adoption as more of clubs are coming

3:03

and they want to adopt these platforms.

3:04

Say like what we feel when we do something

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great during the events,

3:09

like either in the fan experience, during

3:10

the Super Bowl or in the draft,

3:13

we are activating some

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use case for the fans.

3:16

That's where we start feeling, OK, now we

3:17

are doing something great.

3:19

We make it a very

3:20

smooth process for the fans.

3:21

Like just go and create a

3:22

NFL ID and you are registered, right?

3:25

125% hike in the draft

3:28

registration at the time, yeah.

3:30

And you're collecting a ton of data, too.

3:32

Yes.

3:32

With that - those interactions.

3:33

I think we're talking about

3:35

almost 340 million profiles

3:39

at audience in AEP to target.

3:43

That's the audience we are managing.

3:44

There's a lot of unknown fans.

3:45

There's a lot of known fans as well.

3:48

But we are targeting them

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across each and every channel.

3:51

We activate all the channels in the

3:53

platform for the

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340 million audience.

3:55

So fans, yeah.

3:56

That audience is only

3:57

getting bigger as you expand.

3:58

I know the NFL is based in the US, but

4:01

it's a global audience

4:03

of fans, I don't think a

4:04

lot of people realize that.

4:05

We are expanding to international,

4:08

Recently, we launched

4:09

several hub for marketing platform

4:13

for the international market.

4:14

Dutch have their own martech instance.

4:18

Australia have their own martech instance.

4:20

and Brazil, their own,

4:22

Spain, they have their own instance.

4:24

So with the help of this technology, we

4:27

are creating multiple instances

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in each and every region.

4:29

So the fans can get a

4:31

localized experience versus

4:33

oh, we are getting

4:34

targeted from US market.

4:35

So yeah.

4:36

This is the dream.

4:37

This is the vision, right?

4:38

Treating every audience, every person

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like an audience of one,

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no matter where they are, across whatever

4:43

club they cheer for.

4:45

You can say like, expand, AI driven,

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agentic AI in each and every places.

4:50

So we have AEP, AJO and everywhere.

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Like agentic AIs are available.

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We want to activate that and more.

4:59

Thank you so much for sitting down

5:00

with me and congratulations again

5:02

on your win here

5:03

So exciting

5:03

and so well deserved.

Interactive Summary

The NFL's MarTech lead discusses transforming their marketing strategy from a decentralized ecosystem across 32 clubs to a unified, fan-centric approach using Adobe's products. They leveraged Adobe as an orchestration layer to reduce fan over-communication by 30% and ensure personalized experiences. A private GenAI system, developed with Adobe Firefly, generates millions of localized content variations at scale. The NFL utilizes a comprehensive suite of Adobe products, including AEP, AJO, CJA, Analytics, Mix Modeler, Creative Cloud, and Workfront, to manage 340 million fan profiles. This strategy has led to significant success, including a 125% increase in draft registrations and expansion into international markets with localized content.

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