In sports, everybody loves a good underdog story. When Aspercreme – a tiny pain relief brand fighting ageist stereotypes – discovered 58-year-old Tom Cillo was going back to school to play college football, we saw more than a compelling story with massive PR potential. We also saw a living embodiment of our brand strategy. We immediately partnered with Tom on a history-making PR hook: making him the oldest college athlete to ever sign a NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) deal. Then we strategically targeted different levels of media, earning coverage from massive news outlets (ABC, NBC, Fox), national sports reporters (ESPN, The Athletic, Bleacher Report), and college football micro-bloggers with devoted followings. And because we became such a natural part of Tom’s story so quickly, Aspercreme continued to receive earned media attention all season long – from podcasts, to national news articles, to Sunday morning TV shows and beyond. But that was just the first quarter. We then made Tom the face of Aspercreme, and created a season-long storyline that rallied our audience and the media around a simple, powerful message: 58 years, 0 quit. Operating with a microscopic budget, we engineered every aspect of this campaign for earned media: giving Tom his first big billboard in his hometown, taking out a full-page ad in the newspaper he delivered as a boy, creating custom outfits for his pre-game tunnel walk. All season long, we showed how Aspercreme could relieve Tom’s pain on the field while he channeled our brand’s ethos and inspired our audience. With coverage every month of college football season, our partnership became the most talked-about endorsement deal of the season, besting sports heavyweights like Nike, Adidas, Gatorade, and more. The campaign achieved ~$12M in earned media value – more than Aspercreme’s entire annual budget. Critics raved, with the AP hailing it as “a perfect partnership” and The New York Times calling it the “most clever NIL deal of the season.” Social conversation grew 279%, and the impact hit the shelf too: sales spiked by 11.41% the week following the announcement of our partnership.