Julian Edelman built a business on social media, even as Tom Brady poked fun

It started with a haircut, then a well-timed Breaking Bad-themed post, and then some silly parody videos about making smoothies. Julian Edelmans toil from seventh-round flier pick to the upper reaches of the NFL is well told. But long before he stacked up receptions, touchdowns and titles (and a certain catch against Atlanta in the

It started with a haircut, then a well-timed “Breaking Bad”-themed post, and then some silly parody videos about making smoothies.

Julian Edelman’s toil from seventh-round flier pick to the upper reaches of the NFL is well told. But long before he stacked up receptions, touchdowns and titles (and a certain catch against Atlanta in the Super Bowl), he piled up a social media following that today underpins a multi-million dollar retail business.

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He has more than six million followers across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. That only tells part of that story; measured by user engagement with posts and video views, Edelman is in the top five of most popular NFL players. That’s why he has been able to create a thriving brand, JE11, off his quirky videos and timely, funny posts. Behind it is a quick-moving trio of companies, employing 17, that churns out a steady stream of content, pouncing on seemingly every opportunity.

“When I first got in the NFL (in 2009), I was the first guy in the locker room, one of the first guys to have social media, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,” Edelman said of his early years with the Patriots. “Tommy, Brady would always make fun of me. It was one of those things, (he’d say), ‘If you got in your playbook like you got on your phone with all this stuff that you’re doing, you’d be a lot smarter football player.’”

Edelman seems unsure if Brady, who was famously late to social media, really meant it.

“Yeah, and no,” Edelman responds to the question. “Kinda; kinda. So. No. Yeah.”

Sitting by the water outside a Miami Beach house, owned by a friend of his business partner, shortly before the recent Super Bowl — long before social distancing was in the lexicon — he apologizes for being tardy because a call with a doctor over a shoulder injury went long. Asked if he was good for the upcoming season, he replies, “You bet your sweet ass I am. A wild bear shit in the woods?” 

That go-to humor is littered throughout his social media, designed to attract and entertain followers who then might buy his merchandise. But step back for a moment before running to Google the funniest Edelman social media offerings. None of this happens without his partner, Assaf Swissa, a “Seinfeld”-loving jokester who admits he looks completely out of place next to the handsome Edelman and his famous, well-toned friends (former teammate Danny Amendola sits nearby). Edelman dubs Swissa a “nerdy dude.”

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Swissa’s dad, Pini, runs a hair salon in Boston that is the Patriots’ go-to grooming destination. Brady and his wife Gisele Bündchen went there, owner Bob Kraft, so too does Edelman. In 2012, the junior Swissa, coming off a failed candy venture in which the company he founded fired him, started to work with a then-relatively unknown Edelman who had a handful of catches and was coming off an injury.

“I didn’t know you could get fired from a business you started,” Swissa says.

There is even some confusion over whose idea it was for the obscure wide receiver and failed candy entrepreneur to join forces. Swissa says Edelman approached him, the Patriot tells it the other way around. “I was kind of a guy that just wanted to kind of play football and he pitched me these ideas like you know, ‘You should do like a logo.’”

The inconsistency noted, Edelman smiles, some dip in his cheek, and pronounces, “I get hit in the head for a living. I don’t know shit.” He excuses himself to take a moment to spit into Biscayne Bay. 

The joking jock though is also an astute businessman. He recognized early the value of social media to build his brand. He admits he was stunned when a blender maker, Ninja, paid him $50,000 in 2015 for using its product in one of the smoothie videos that then ran on his YouTube channel. The smoothie videos were an idea ginned up for Edelman to spoof cooking shows, and they took off. 

Since launching his business in 2013, he has sold more than $10 million worth of merchandise from T-shirts to yarmulkes to children’s books through social media platforms and his own JE11 website. After throwing a pass for a touchdown in a game several years ago on a trick play, Edelman’s team within hours created a shirt to pay homage to the feat, and over four days sold $250,000 worth of them.

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“We are one of the biggest direct-to-consumer (athlete) brands in the league,” Swissa said. “There was a point where we were the biggest, I don’t know Tom (Brady’s) stats from last year. That’s who we are racing against. So it’s a fun little side competition. We’re outselling 99.9 percent of the guys who are doing this.”

Swissa likes to describe Edelman as the athlete that Facebook built. That’s because long before he was a Super Bowl MVP, he used Facebook and Instagram sales and promotional functions to sell and connect with fans. Many of his sales utilize Instagram’s feature that allows consumers to click on, say, a jersey in a picture, which then leads to a site where the user can buy.

So impressed with how he used its platforms, Facebook asked Edelman to become a shelter-in-place ambassador, along with the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Stephen Curry and Naomi Osaka. In the past week, he ran a montage of first responders on his Instagram page and a funny video of him wearing a mask.

“He and his team are super creative,” said Kevin Cote, who is the Facebook sports partnerships lead for teams and athletes, which provides help to the luminaries in sports on using the technology. Some need his help, not Edelman and his team. “They do the heavy lifting.”

While Edelman doesn’t rank in the top five in terms of NFL active player Facebook Page likes or Instagram followers, he does in the following performance metrics, according to CrowdTangle: Facebook and Instagram interactions and video views since he entered the league a decade ago; and Facebook and Instagram interactions, video views and followers added in 2019.

Projecting such success would have taken a soothsayer. He played quarterback for Kent State and at junior college before the Pats drafted him in 2009 to be a special teams player. When an injured Edelman went in for his propitious haircut at Pini’s, he had maybe a few dozen catches over a few years and the Pats were set at the receiver position.

What started the transformation, besides his gritty play, was a 2013 social media post. It came during the peak of the TV show, “Breaking Bad.” When a Pats game came up against an episode, Edelman put on his Facebook page a picture of him scoring next to the caption, “Heisenberg can wait. Sunday Night Football #SNF.” Heisenberg is the alias of the lead character on “Breaking Bad.”

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“That post, Julian had 15,000 total followers across all social media platforms back then,” Swissa said. “And we generated a total of 2 million impressions for this kid who had no following. And that’s when we knew we had lightning in the bottle. We knew that Julian on Facebook, sort of like a platform, we could be entrepreneurial, and make something that would grow for us and not have something that was sort of handed to us that if we applied creativity and effort, we could make something great.”

DVR Breaking Bad #snf

Posted by Julian Edelman on Sunday, September 29, 2013

Swissa and Edelman brainstormed goofy videos, like Smoothie Tyme and Burger Tyme. A recent series include Edelman mockingly reviewing movies (these run on his social media platforms). An episode last year starred Edelman reviewing “Frozen 2” and teammate Chase Winovich appearing in a princess dress and lip-syncing a song from the movie. Edelman interrupts him and tells him to leave, and Winovich wonders if he can get a ride home.

Behind these efforts are three companies. The first is Super Digital, Swissa’s Boston-based creative agency that has a wide range of clients, including Edelman and Chandler Jones. The 33-year-old Edelman boasts his own firm JE11 with five employees, and Edelman and Swissa are partners in Coast Productions. Coast produced the 2019 Showtime documentary on Edelman that featured Brady, Snoop Dogg, Guy Fieri and Mark Wahlberg.

Edelman’s and Swissa’s companies recently collaborated with Hasbro on “NERF House,” a social series featuring NFL players living together and shooting NERF bullets at each other. The players, who include Joe Burrow and JuJu Smith-Schuster, were recruited by Coast and Hasbro. Burrow is not yet an NFL player, but is widely expected to be the first pick in next week’s NFL Draft.

Julian is such a kid at heart – he is hilarious, easy going, and despite his huge fanbase, incredibly relatable,” Adam Kleinman, vice president of global marketing at Hasbro, wrote in an email. “In working with his production company and creative studio (Coast Productions/Super Digital), we collaborated on the idea for NERF House as a social content series that would take a hilarious look at the behind-the-scenes antics pro athletes have together.

“And the engagement we received from fans on season 1 has been incredible – especially seeing some top personalities outside of the NERF House interact with the series on social!”

Just five years ago a star athlete like Edelman would likely have made commercials for Hasbro, done some appearances, and received his endorsement check. Now, the savvy ones pitch concepts and recruit other stars. Edelman’s play with NERF is long term. For the first series, all Edelman gets is brand exposure. If and when there is a series 2, he could get a cut of sales that occur off his platforms.

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“(I) make cool, funny content to promote stupid things,” he said. “I mean, there’s no more commercials anymore. Everything’s social media. Everyone, everything’s digital, like you don’t even want to do a commercial anymore … no one watches TV. Every person that is 25 and younger is just scrolling. They’re scrolling for instant satisfaction on Instagram, Twitter, etc., TikTok, all that bull, you know what I mean? So the game is completely changed.”

Edelman hasn’t ventured onto TikTok, which features 15-second videos that make Edelman’s look like Cecil B. DeMille movies. He admits he may need to venture there, but right now he is the one chasing the trends and not leading.

“That’s making me feel old is when I’m in the locker room, like what the fuck, I, what is this,” he said. “And you know, you got guys like Winovich and these younger guys, younger players are like, ‘You going to get on this TikTok tool?’” He used a whiny, mocking voice to state the question.

“We probably will,” Edelman added. “But anytime we do that kind of stuff now with social media, it’s got to be completely thought out and you got to attack it with the plan and how we’re going to launch this and how we’re going to launch that, you know, all those types of things. That’s the thing about social media, everything’s strategy. Everything’s timing.”

(Photo: Daniel Kaplan / The Athletic)

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