How Sharpie found a way to position pens as an NFL staple

One of the highlights of an NFL player’s rookie season is the day they sign their contract. If a player is lucky, many more signatures will follow over the course of their career.

Sharpie wants to put their pens in those athletes’ hands.

The Newell-owned brand’s Rookie of the Year program, now in its third year, is meant to achieve something many sports marketers strive for: the tying of a brand to a sport in a way that is unlikely to make consumers question the connection. This year, the program is rolling out through a partnership with Arizona Cardinals running back and No. 3 draft pick Jeremiyah Love.

In its first two years, which also featured individual partnerships with top draft picks, the program has driven increases in clicks, reach, sales, and awareness, according to Newell CMO Nick Hammitt.

“When you think about football, you don’t necessarily automatically go to a pen,” Hammitt told Marketing Brew. “This inflection point of engaging with rookies as they’re almost starting all over again and figuring out how they’re going to make their mark in the league seemed like a perfect way to bring Sharpie authentically into the football conversation.”

Love of the game

One of the things the Sharpie team looks for in their rookie partners is personal stories that “fit well with the brand,” Hammitt said. They found it in spades with Love, who created a “sports-anime comic universe,” Jeremonstar Comics, when he attended Notre Dame.

“He likes to draw and create on his own as one of his stress outlets, and so that fit perfectly,” Hammitt said, adding that the program is “probably never going to be that on the mark” again.

The exact content Sharpie creates with rookies differs year to year, but it typically has some connection to the athletes’ passions, Hammitt said. With Love, that’s so far included a collaboration on a limited-edition comic called Jeremonstar: Draft Day Ashcan, which dropped on draft night and was created using Sharpie products. And since Sharpie signed Love two months before he was drafted, he of course inked his contract with a Sharpie pen.

Hammitt said the work is generally meant to drive cultural relevance for Sharpie. More specifically, his team tracks KPIs like engagements and impressions, with the goal of increasing those stats each year of the program, he said.

In year two, the campaign generated 3.6 million clicks, up 428% from 471,000 in year one, according to Sharpie. Reach more than doubled in that time, up 102%. Sales and awareness for the Sharpie S-Gell pen also went up, according to the brand, although Hammitt said the campaign is “more of an equity-driver that is really building up the brand itself.”

Pick ’em

The Sharpie team ran the NFL route due to the massive reach of the league, Hammitt told us, but the brand isn’t an official league or team sponsor, instead centering its work in football on individual athletes. In 2024, Sharpie partnered with then-rookies Michael Penix Jr. and Rome Odunze, and in 2025, it worked with Ashton Jeanty and Tetairoa McMillan. All of its athlete partnerships for the program so far have been top-nine draft picks.

And while popularity isn’t everything to the Sharpie team, it does count for something, Hammitt said.

“You want to make sure that you’re partnering with somebody that has some sort of recognition coming in,” he said. “The story loses a little bit of legs if you’re going after a fourth-rounder or a fifth-rounder.”

When it comes to on-field performance, Hammitt isn’t expecting miracles out of rookies; in fact, he said, his team expects “some level of turbulence.” The brand strives to depict those athletes’ lives off the field, not only their athletic successes, which Hammitt said “gives them dimension, and also makes them accessible and real to consumers.”

That being said, Hammitt probably wasn’t upset to see that Love scored his first NFL touchdown in his debut game.

“Our plan isn’t baked on only success on the field,” he said, “but it absolutely is going to help.”