VETERANS VOYAGE
The NFL's annual "Salute to Service" campaign honors military members and their families.
Here's how we honored a group of combat Veterans with a surprise trip to Washington D.C. on Veterans Day, and an unforgettable recognition on gameday featuring military veteran and country music star Jamey Johnson.
A SURPRISE TRIP
We entered my 2nd season seeking a bigger way to honor our Veterans around the Salute to Service campaign.
Our team partnered with the Vikings Social Impact department to conceive a plan to thank military combat veterans from major conflicts throughout the last century.
Suspecting they were attending a "thank you" Veterans Day brunch, these Veterans were surprised to learn that they were taking a private flight to Washington DC that same day to spend Veterans Day weekend visiting the war memorials in the nation's capital.
Vikings Hall of Famer Paul Krause delivered the surprise and joined the group on the weekend trip.
HALFTIME
Upon return to Minnesota, the group learned they would be honored during halftime of the upcoming Vikings game.
We recruited military veteran and Country music star Jamey Johnson, who delivered a stirring rendition of his hit song
"In Color" with a live 10-piece band. We set video to the lyrics of Jamey's song to honor each Veteran and combat era, and brought more than 100 additional veterans onto the field for a patriotic full-stadium moment around his brilliant cover of "This Land is Your Land".
One final surprise
Following Halftime, the Veteran group returned to the field for one final encore. After a rousing reception from the crowd, executives from partner grocery stores HyVee surprised the entire group with free groceries for a year.
Partnering with HyVee on the program brought great value to a stadium founding partner, and unlocked enough incremental funds to cover the cost of the entire program.
All told, the project made an impact on fans online and in stadium, earning the most favorable fan sentiment score of the season en route to the #1 fan entertainment score in the NFL across all of 2017. And for one particular group of American heroes, it was a memory to last a lifetime.