The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2023
NFL makes Super Bowl viewers chase Diana Flores with a fake-live flag-football stunt
On Super Bowl Sunday 2023 the NFL blurred ad and broadcast with a live-looking flag-football chase starring Diana Flores.
NFL
What it had to solve
The NFL wanted its biggest stage to grow the game with the audiences it most needs — women, youth and Latino fans — and flag football, one of the world's fastest-growing sports with more than 20 million players, is led by women. The league made Diana Flores, Mexico's national flag quarterback, the star of its Super Bowl spot rather than a cameo.
How it works
The NFL wanted its biggest stage of the year to grow the game with the three audiences it most needs: women, youth and Latino fans. Flag football is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world — more than 20 million players across 100-plus countries — and women are leading it, so the league made Diana Flores, quarterback of Mexico's national flag team, the hero of its Super Bowl spot rather than a cameo.
Created by 72andSunny and directed by Bryan Buckley, the film staged a practical, star-studded chase through stadiums, rooftops, hotels and malls. Flores outruns NFL players Sauce Gardner, Jalen Ramsey, Aidan Hutchinson, Cam Heyward, Davante Adams and Jim Kelly, plus Billie Jean King, MrBeast and her own mother, with much of the dialogue in Spanish.
The spot aired directly after the Apple Music halftime show and opened with Fox's Erin Andrews interviewing Flores live on the sideline before trying to pull her flag — so viewers genuinely could not tell where the broadcast ended and the ad began. The stunt had everyone asking whether it was live and who the parrot was, putting women's flag football on the biggest advertising stage in the United States.
Why it lands
- Fake-live tension gives the buy a news hook: the audience watches to find out whether what they saw really happened.
- The chase is a product demo: a Mexican flag quarterback outrunning NFL stars shows the sport women lead.
- Casting Diana Flores, Billie Jean King, MrBeast and NFL players spans women, youth and Latino fans in one cast.
- Half-Spanish dialogue treats the Latino audience as the hero of the story instead of a translation afterthought.
What it did
The stunt had America asking whether it was live, whether Flores's mother really tried to pull her flag, and who the parrot was (#whoistheparrot); the chase put women's flag football — and a Mexican female quarterback — on the biggest advertising stage in the US, and D&AD archived the work.
What you can take
Make the ad look like the broadcast and the audience's first reaction is the campaign: is this real? Live-ness turns a media buy into a news event and a product demo into a story.
Since then
Run With It aired during Super Bowl LVII on 12 February 2023, right after the Apple Music halftime show, and immediately became a dissection point in sports and advertising press over whether it was live. It sat inside the NFL's wider flag-football push — the league had turned its Pro Bowl into flag games that same week — and flag football was later confirmed for the LA28 Olympic programme. D&AD's awards archive carries the film.
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