Influencers in the End Zone: Expanding Reach for the Liberty Mutual Music City Bowl
The Liberty Mutual Music City Bowl (LMMCB) is Nashville’s premier annual college sporting event. REED partnered with Music City Bowl, LLC and Liberty Mutual Insurance to develop and execute a full marketing plan to promote the game, including media relations, influencer and community relations, paid marketing, social media strategy and more. 2025 was the first year official influencer partnerships were implemented into the bowl game strategy, so it was important to REED to show the value of working with local content creators and tastemakers. We believe working with influencers and tastemakers is fruitful because they provide authentic endorsements that can assist a brand’s visibility and credibility in an organic, personal way.
REED was tasked with securing and coordinating impactful influencer and tastemaker partnerships for the LMMCB game and pre-game activities, including the team gifting suite, the official welcome party at Category 10 and Battle of the Bands on the iconic Lower Broadway. The goal of social media coverage from these partnerships was to encourage ticket sales, event attendance and, to put it simply, general buzz around the game and participating teams.
On gameday, REED hosted select creators on the field, giving them an “up close and personal” view of the team’s warm-ups. This created exclusivity for the creators and opportunities to gather unique content for their audiences.
INSIGHT:
People are more likely to purchase things and attend events from people they trust and content creators who post authentically on social media. With this in mind, we targeted creators that we believed could “put butts in seats.” By working with both macro and micro influencers, we would ensure that people from all walks of life see coverage of the LMMCB events.
STRATEGY:
REED was very intentional about providing creators with an exciting experience they would want to share, not one they had to because they were contractually obligated. By making the offer equally as exciting to them as it would be to their audience and targeting creators who were fans of the teams playing in the game, we were able to secure some heavy hitters in the Nashville influencer circle.
Our offers included:
- Tickets to the Liberty Mutual Music City Bowl
- Gameday parking passes*
- Pre-game field passes*
- Tickets to the official MCB Tailgate*
- VIP access to the Battle of the Bands on Lower Broadway*
- VIP access to the team welcome party at Category 10, Luke Combs’ bar in Downtown Nashville*
- VIP access to the player’s gifting suite at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and a custom leather belt from Blue Delta Jean Co.*
*These items were offered to select creators*
ACTIVATION:
REED began the influencer relations piece of our full project scope by developing a strategic outreach list that was diverse across many criteria: age, gender, audience demographics and niche, to name a few. We leveraged existing relationships with local creators and built new ones to ensure the LMMCB’s coverage reached audiences far and wide.
From there, we began outreach, inviting influencers and tastemakers to participate in one or more of the Bowl’s public events, including the MCB Battle of the Bands and the game itself. Select influencers were also invited to the team welcome party at Category 10 and the team gifting suite, hosted at the Gaylord Opryland hotel, where attendees received custom leather belts from Blue Delta Jean Co.
Influencers interested in attending the game were offered complimentary tickets to Nissan Stadium in exchange for social media coverage. Influencers with higher reach or impact were offered additional game-day perks, such as parking passes, tickets to the official tailgate and pre-game on-field passes.
REED facilitated the influencer visits from ticket designation to escorting them on and off the field ahead of kick-off.
RESULTS:
REED’s contracted goal was to secure three to 12 partnerships for coverage across MCB’s events. Through the influencer campaign, REED secured 18 partnerships, resulting in 98 pieces of social media coverage that reached over 22 million people. Creator highlights include partnerships with lifestyle creators like Shawn Booth and Chloe Holladay, ESPN’s Stephanie Otay, comedian Cody Smith, musicians Lily Rose and Rodney D. Smith and local events accounts like NashvilleXP and Nashventures.