Carhartt is aligning with the NFL through the tradespeople building Highmark Stadium

Norma Delaney, vp of marketing and creative at Carhartt, said the strength of the campaign is how Carhartt stayed true to its authentic self as a company that serves working people. By staying in its lane, the ads naturally highlight the products and its customers.

“We have a lot of authenticity because we’ve just been very focused on our consumer and what their needs are. And as long as we’re always coming back to that, it leads to really interesting marketing efforts because we’re starting the conversation about work that is happening all around us,” she said.

A separate two-minute spot features Bills alum Thurman Thomas, whose construction company 34 Group installed the seats in the new stadium, giving a tour to current running back James Cook III. The brand previously shot a spot with Thomas last fall to showcase the tradespeople and workers behind the construction.

So far, the campaign has driven five times as much traffic to the brand’s “Join the Trades” landing page as during the same period last year, highlighting its partnerships with different trade schools and training programs, Delaney said. The brand is also driving brand demand and awareness with a full-funnel campaign that includes snippets on social media, she said.

“There’s a lot of marketplace interest in the stadium,” she said. “This is the only stadium that is opening this year, so there’s a lot of interest in the content that we’ve developed.”

Tapping into sports and fandom has been a major trend for brands this year. Some jumped on the World Cup bandwagon even without scoring an official sponsorship, while others are leaning into league- or team-specific partnerships. Beauty brands like Ipsy are increasingly pairing up with WNBA teams, while active swimwear brand Left on Friday just became the official beach apparel partner of Volleyball World, which promotes volleyball events around the world.

With the NFL regular season starting on September 9, brands are starting to roll out associated campaigns. Longtime partner Bud Light has already released two new ads, while Abercrombie & Fitch, the NFL’s official fashion sponsor, is selling fashion-forward, team-specific merch at its own stores, stadiums and Fanatics.com. This week, the Disney x Champion NFL Collection, which paired characters with teams for special-edition merch, stirred up a wealth of internet discourse.

For Carhartt, a private, family-owned company, the Buffalo Bills and NFL partnership comes at a time when the brand has seen a resurgence in recent years, as its workwear staples like its chore coat and beanies have caught on with a broader audience. Its sister company, Carhartt WIP, has gained steam in recent years for its streetwear-style aesthetic inspired by the brand’s designs. Gretchen Valade, the great-great-granddaughter of the company’s founder, Hamilton Carhartt, recently launched a sub-brand called Wylie Welling that sells repaired and upcycled vintage Carhartt pieces.

Delaney said the NFL opportunity came up around the construction at Highmark Stadium, the only new home for an NFL team this year. The brand has long highlighted tradespeople in its campaign work and knew that a project of this magnitude would have multiple layers of contractors. One of them happened to be owned by Thomas, a fan of the brand who has visited the company’s Dearborn, Michigan headquarters before. The connection was “a marketer’s dream,” she said, which led to conversations with the Bills and the NFL.

Filming took place at Highmark Stadium across construction periods over the past two years, and the new ad spot shows the stadium going up “in reverse.” Delaney said one of the campaign’s biggest focuses was tapping into the local market. Beyond the ad spots, Carhartt also showed up at Highmark Stadium during the first preseason game on August 15. It celebrated the stadium’s opening with rally towels bearing the names of construction crew members, along with in-stadium ads. It also donated $300,000 to support vocational programs in Western New York.

Though Carhartt is now known beyond construction workers and tradespeople, the company’s main focus is still on developing products that are “site-worthy” and can stand up to the rigors of trade work, Delaney said.

That clear sense of the customer and the product’s purpose also applies to the marketing efforts, she said, even the ones that tap into broader cultural moments.

“It would be easy to follow a trend and go in that direction, but that’s not why we’re Carhartt,” she said.