Creative Direction • Lead Design
Design, Web, Video, Radio
The Ask
In 2019, Gateway Casinos entered a five-year, multi-million-dollar partnership with the National Football League, becoming its Official Casino Partner in Canada. The ask was to build out a full creative program worthy of that partnership — one that would run across in-house POS, television, radio, social, web takeovers, billboards, kiosk promotions, and branding within the official NFL app and website.
The Challenge
The NFL is one of the most recognizable and protected brands in the world, and that reality shaped the entire creative process. This wasn't a case of building a brand from a blank page — it was building a wide, multi-channel program that had to earn its place next to an elite global brand while operating within the NFL's strict licensing and brand-usage standards. Every asset, from a billboard to a kiosk screen to the assets living on the NFL's own app and site, needed to clear a level of polish and compliance that a self-owned brand doesn't require. Layered on top of that was scale and channel diversity: sustaining one consistent campaign voice across broadcast, radio, social, physical in-venue touchpoints, and a third-party digital platform simultaneously.
The Solution
The response was a national-caliber, multi-channel campaign built to move fluidly across owned, earned, and partner-controlled channels:
Broadcast and social carried the core brand story and set the tone for the partnership at scale.
In-house POS and kiosk promotions brought that same energy down to the property level, connecting the national partnership to an actual guest interaction.
TV and radio delivered reach and reinforced the legitimacy of the partnership to a broad Canadian audience.
Web takeovers and branding on the official NFL app and website put Gateway's creative inside the NFL's own digital ecosystem — requiring work built to NFL specs and cleared through NFL's review process.
Billboards extended the campaign into out-of-home around Gateway's markets, tying the national story back to local presence.
