Wayfair is concentrating its fall advertising on sports with the “Wayfair Delivers” campaign, anchored by a new TV ad starring quarterback Matthew Stafford and his family. 

Stafford’s status as an All Star quarterback gives the spot contextual relevance for football fans, while the family setting gives casual sports watchers a relatable hook. Together, the two audiences help Wayfair get the most from its spend.

The retailer is spending five times more on network football games this year, according to the company.

Wayfair will measure the campaign, which launched in September, on brand and performance metrics, Amanda Evans, head of brand, insights, and partnerships at Wayfair, said last week on a panel at Advertising Week New York (AWNY).

A relatable family

Wayfair’s in-house design team and Paramount Media Labs, Paramount Advertising’s full-service brand-content studio, developed the “Wayfair Delivers” campaign creative. The spot rolling out on major network football programming shows Stafford and his family shopping Wayfair to update their living space. 

“I think if you look at the spot, it looks like a lot of people’s families on any given Sunday,” Dayo Harewood, senior vice president of creative, brand studio at Paramount Media Labs, said at AWNY. “And so we really wanted to tease out that universal truth, and that visual of what it feels like having a maturing family, and look at your living room, and be like, ‘OK this isn’t working.’ And who better to work with when you want to upgrade your space than Wayfair?”

The creative features Stafford’s wife and four daughters, adding to the realism and relatability of the ad.

“We knew we had made a significant investment in football, and that 4Q was going to lean heavily in football, and that’s where contextual relevance comes in,” said Evans. “Nowadays, there’s so much content, it’s that breakthrough that you need, and that’s what the Stafford family allowed us to achieve.”

Balancing brand and performance

Data shaped every stage of the campaign. Wayfair used internal data insights to write the brief, then drafted and tested multiple scripts. After the shoot, it tested a rough cut of the finished ad.

Another goal was an ad with broad enough appeal to connect beyond football audiences.

"At Wayfair, we test everything,” Evans said. “[The spot] performed well against an NFL audience, but it also performed well against a non-sports audience. And that’s important because we’re going to run it against sports. It performed really well against an NBA audience, too.”

Early results rank the Stafford family ad among the top-performing commercials Wayfair has ever produced, though colleagues reminded Evans that the results were still early.

“Just because you’re a brand marketer doesn’t mean you can be vague on results,” Evans said. “It’s the whole notion of storytelling, backed by performance.”

Testing and AI

Before launch, Wayfair tested a rough cut of the ad to measure brand trust and the perceived quality of Wayfair products, which is a barrier to trust, according to Evans.

To boost quality scores among customers, Wayfair offers “Wayfair Verified” products on its site: a hand-selected group chosen by company product specialists who use a 10-point inspection system.

Wayfair’s brand team is adopting AI tools to support testing and review processes in its campaign.

“Testing is expensive, and it’s important to acknowledge that,” said Evans. “For our big-investment spots, that’s where AI has helped us with a lot of the testing. Instead of doing customer interviews, we have an AI bot, ‘George,’ who does the interviews for us.”

She added: “With AI, there’s so much data at your fingertips, and that actually, in my opinion, makes human instinct more important.”

“It’s allowed certain parts of the workflow to be faster, but…we don’t want to skip steps,” Evans said.

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