NerdWallet approached us with a challenge: to create a bold, culture-shifting brand act that would make being smart with money cool.
With their target audience deeply invested in sports, we focused our ideation there. At the time, NIL deals were brand-new and their impacts were shaking up college athletics. And while we were all for athletes getting paid for their likeness, we realized that very little was being done to educate these young athletes—many just 18 to 21 years old—on how to manage those large sums of money they were suddenly receiving.
So, we teamed up with college basketball superstars Juju Watkins and Rob Dillingham to create the Smartest NIL Deal Ever, the first NIL contract that required players to be smart with their money by using NerdWallet’s financial tools. By signing real college athletes to smart NIL deals and showcasing their smart financial decisions, we created a powerful model for others to follow. Which resulted in a campaign that didn’t just support athletes but made smart money management a badge of honor.
Even though we were working with some of the biggest names in college basketball in Juju and Rob, we knew that simply signing them to an NIL deal wasn’t enough to grab the internet’s attention. So, we took it a step further.
As part of their deals, each player received a custom NerdWallet wallet, designed by none other than the legendary Shoe Surgeon. To build intrigue, we teased these wallets on social media, as if Juju and Rob were dropping their own signature sneakers, sparking speculation and excitement online. The reveal was perfectly timed with the first round of the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments, ensuring maximum visibility when both athletes were on the sport’s biggest stage.
But pulling it off wasn’t easy. We wanted each wallet to be personal, so Juju and Rob were deeply involved in the design process—just like they would be for an actual signature shoe. Budget constraints also forced us to get scrappy. With most of our funds going toward signing the athletes, we had to be resourceful with the fabrication of the wallets to make sure the videos we filmed felt as dramatic and premium as an actual shoe drop (nothing a few Amazon light bars, a smoke machine, and some dramatic, slow-mo shots couldn’t solve). And since Rob wasn’t allowed to miss much time away from the team, we also had to fly out to Lexington, Kentucky, to film him on campus in his few free hours after practice.
Between the content we created and co-posted with Rob, Juju, and Shoe Surgeon, we generated:
The campaign also over-delivered in 10 of 16 benchmarks as well as earning three national media exclusives with Women’s Health, Men’s Health, and Forbes, 30 pieces of coverage, and 911,141,463 total media impressions.
