Valvoline

Few businesses sound less glamorous than motor oil. It's not fashion. Not tech. Not luxury. It's oil. Functional, invisible, necessary. And yet a brand like Valvoline — an American company founded more than 150 years ago in Kentucky — is investing seriously in football. They put their name on the sleeve of Sevilla FC. Not exactly the first category you'd associate with elite football. We worked with Valvoline on a couple of productions in Sevilla in 2022 and 2023, together with Footballco. Everything about it felt straightforward. A player in a mechanic's warehouse. Concrete floors. Tools. Engines. Direct light. Some of the players didn't know much about cars. You could tell. But that wasn't the point. Nobody was pretending they were mechanics. The tone was simple and honest. And that felt right. Valvoline isn't experimenting. They're a public company (NYSE: VVV), doing around $1.7 billion in annual revenue, spending $70+ million a year on advertising, and steadily expanding their retail footprint across North America. When a company like that chooses football, it's worth paying attention to why. Football reaches people in a way very few platforms do. Across every social and economic layer, every weekend. What I liked about the Sevilla work was that nobody was trying to be cool. Valvoline makes motor oil. They know that. The content didn't pretend otherwise — it just put the brand in a football context and let it sit there. That's harder than it sounds. Most brands entering football feel the pressure to become something they're not. Athletes dressed like models (I see you, Under Armour). Industrial brands pretending to be lifestyle companies. Oil companies acting like they belong in streetwear. Valvoline didn't do any of that. They showed up as an oil company that sponsors a football club, and the content reflected that honestly. You don't need to be glamorous to belong in football. You need to be clear about who you are.