NFL's 'Por La Cultura' campaign seeks inclusivity; league addresses controversial logo

When Marissa Solis was a little girl, the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers came to Mexico City, and she fell in love with football. Her lifelong admiration turned into a dream job last year when the NFL offered her a position as the Senior Vice President of Global Brand and Consumer Marketing.

"I never in a million years thought I would actually be at the helm of advertising for the National Football League, which is wow," Solis told USA TODAY Sports. "Even saying it now, it’s surreal to me."

Solis is one of more than 30 million Hispanic fans of the NFL in the United States, according to 2019 data from SSRS/Luker on Trends Sports Poll. The league's "Por La Cultura" campaign celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month, which ended Saturday, and is part of her team's mission to use the NFL’s platform to celebrate Latinos.

The campaign — meaning "For the Culture'' with the intention to weave music, fashion and art into the sport — began last season and included multi-platinum artist Ozuna and former New York Giants wide receiver Victor Cruz as faces of the initiative.

This year, "Por La Cultura" kicked off with musician J Balvin and included players and coaches wearing custom cleats celebrating Latino heritage, and the league selling jerseys incorporating the art of Mexican-American designer CHITO.

"Latinos are … having such a cultural impact and an economic impact in our country that anything that I think elevates the conversation is welcome," Solis said.

The Ñ in NFL

Football fans — and even those who don't follow the sport — saw the ÑFL shield logo to commemorate Latino Heritage Month, which went viral.

At the time, the league said, “This shield integrates an unmistakable Latin flavor (and) is fundamental to our always-on, 365-day initiative. The electric brush stroke of the 'eñe' is filled with an infectious personality that is carried out through the rest of the look and feel."

But some reacted with frustration, confused by the symbolism. The tilde symbol above the n changes to the meaning of the letter and word. National in Spanish is nacional, which does not use the tilde.

“The ÑFL practiced colonialism in miniature,” USA TODAY reporter Lorenzo Reyes said. “It inaccurately misappropriated a character vital to the Spanish language and instead whitewashed it alongside the sterile corporate speak that is, in effect, an erasure. It reduced an entire diaspora in one tweet.”

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Hispanic marketing expert Trinidad Aguirre said the design was evidence of the NFL's marketing team not caring about its fans or of a lack of Hispanic representation in the decision-making process.

“It took most of the Latinos who saw it in America about .5 seconds to say, ‘That’s wrong,'" he said.

But Solis said that the intention of the Ñ shield was to be inclusive and not so on the nose.

"It was never intended to be a literal interpretation,” she said. “As a Mexican, I know an 'ñ' is very different from an 'n'."

The reception was not what the team hoped for, but it wasn't a complete wash, Solis said.

"It was disappointing to see some of the discussion around it, but I actually think it’s great to have the conversation because the conversation elevates," she said. "You want to elevate the community, you want to have these constructive conversations around our culture because again, it puts us front and center. I think that’s where we need to be as a community, is front and center.”

'The Celebration'

NFL Cultural Strategist Javier Farfan is Ecuadorian and a first-generation American. He put many of the entertainment pieces together for the campaign, using his experience at VIACOM where he helped launch MTV Trés, his work at Roc Nation and his pure love for music. He said he believes Latino culture is pop culture and wanted to weave those elements into the league's DNA.

“It’s not the Latino project,” Farfan said. “It’s actually part of the overall fabric of what we’re creating within the communication out to the broader marketplace.”

Another piece of the campaign is "The Celebration," a 30-second advertisement starring "Hamilton" and "In the Heights" actor Anthony Ramos. Farfan had been separately recruiting Ramos, writer Lemon Andersen and director Jessy Terrero and soon connected the dots that the three creatives were already friends.

“Football was a big part of growing up,” Ramos said. “I think that’s just what got me excited about doing this. That’s what drove me to this piece. I’ve watched football my whole life. To be a part of a campaign that influences people to watch the game is special.”

Terrero – who started his own company, Cinema Giants, to help fill the void of diverse content – said, "There wasn’t conversations about me having to explain to someone who doesn’t understand my culture what my culture should feel like.”

In the video, Ramos, a die-hard New York Jets fan, walks through Raymond James Stadium wearing a custom No. 22 jersey to commemorate the year. The visual is a series of vignettes showing fans of all ages from across the country with bilingual narration from Ramos.

At the end, there's an elderly woman doing the griddy in her kitchen. Although she's wearing a Cincinnati Bengals T-shirt and is emulating Ja'Marr Chase, Andersen based the character off his godmother Andrea, who was a huge New York Giants fan. He has vivid memories of her dancing when they beat the Buffalo Bills to win Super Bowl XXV.

Andersen said the scene was an ode to the hard-working, self-sacrificing grandmothers who let loose for Sunday football.

“That’s all they have because the rest of the week they’re laboring for their families and waiting for their husbands to come home and making sure the kids have it better than they do," he said while wearing an ÑFL jacket and hat.

In 2019, only eight out of 1,657 players in the NFL identified as Latino or Hispanic, according to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES). In "The Celebration," a fan is wearing a jersey for Cesar Ruiz, a lineman for the New Orleans Saints, but otherwise much of the representation is via the fans.

'Por La Cultura'

Another goal of the ad was to encompass all different nationalities represented in the Latino umbrella, according to Jessy Terrero.

"Sometimes it gets tough because it’s such a wide net we have to throw," he said. "How do you hit every flag at the same time? You don’t want anyone to be excluded. That was one of the things that we wanted to make sure that we did."

For Aguirre, the commercial did just that, but the poor taste of the shield lingered.

"I thought it was an excellent job all the way through," Aguirre said. "When you see it, I thought it was a nice portrayal of all the cultures in their respective territories, celebrating Mexican-Americans to other Hispanic cultures on the East Coast, I thought it was a great blending and honoring of all the various cultures, but they literally fumbled on the one-yard line with that shield."

Farfan said the shield, which is just one element of the campaign, should not take away from the overall good that has been done to elevate Latino creatives and give back to the community.

"Look, what we’re trying to focus on really is not about that, it’s about the overall campaign," Farfan said. "If we’re just looking at that piece, we’re not looking at what we’re trying to achieve. One is creating a campaign that is made by Latinos for Latinos that it’s really about a holistic program as opposed to just a design."

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The NFL partnered with the Hispanic Heritage Fund to provide scholarships to student-athletes in hopes of encouraging them in their sports. During Super Bowl weekend in February, they honored ten student-athletes for their achievements and will award more students next spring.

"We are all Latin, Latinos, Latinx, of Latin descent, from soup to nuts,” Anderson said.“I think people forget that what’s happening behind the scenes is just as important as what’s happening on camera, that we all came together with that one purpose of representing La Cultura.”

With this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month over, the NFL carries on a clear vision, Solis said.

According to her, “Por La Cultura” continues through the end of the season, including Super Bowl artwork designed by a Mexican-Native American artist. And in November, the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers face off in an international game at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City — like the one that ignited Solis’ passion for football when she was younger.

“I think for me, that’s what this campaign is also about,” Solis said, “putting those people front and center so that others can see them, so that they see that it’s actually possible to succeed and be and give back and be a great person in this country.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hispanic Heritage Month: NFL speaks on 'Por La Cultura' campaign