Ryan Reynolds Employs 'Jake From State Farm' to Exploit Taylor Swift's Fling With Travis Kelce

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | October 4, 2023 |

By Emma Chance | Celebrity | October 4, 2023 |

We all saw Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds in Travis Kelce’s suite at the Kansas City Chiefs v. New York Jets game last week with Lively’s bestie and Kelce’s maybe-boo, Taylor Swift. What we didn’t know was that Reynolds was cooking up a plan for another game that Sunday between the Washington Commanders and the Philadelphia Eagles, the team of the other Kelce brother, Jason Kelce.

No, it wasn’t a pop star eagerly cheering Jason Kelce on; it was Jake from State Farm, who was filmed in conversation with Kelce and his mother, much like Swift days earlier.

@jakefromstatefarm Jason Kelce and I will not be discussing his Personal Price Plan. He did make me a great friendship bracelet tho! #JasonKelce #Kelce #Football ♬ original sound - Jake from State Farm

@espn #DonnaKelce is a superstar 🤩 (📺 FOX) #jakefromstatefarm #eagles #kelce #nfl ♬ A commercial song featuring a light whistle and ukulele(833940) - 8th Color

Apparently, Reynolds has a marketing company, Maximum Effort, “which specializes in launching campaigns that capitalize on viral moments” via Hollywood Reporter). The viral moment being capitalized on was, I guess, Taylor going to the Chiefs game, and the capitalization was, I guess, sending the guy who plays Jake from State Farm in commercials (actor Kevin Miles) to an Eagles Game.

The question here is, who is capitalizing? Who stands to gain from this? The Kelces? The Eagles and/or Chiefs? Ryan Reynolds? State Farm? Jake?

George Dewey, co-founder of Maximum Effort, had this to say:

“No one can capture the zeitgeist quite like Tayor Swift, and you know, her appearance at the Kansas City Chiefs games really dominated the cultural landscape for like five or six days, so when we kind of arrived at this idea during a brainstorm for another project, it just felt too good to resist.”

Reynolds is, at the very least, a man who understands marketing opportunities. It seems to me that his main motivation for buying a Welsh soccer team was to use it to advertise his other businesses, Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile, both of which have been sold in the past three years, the former in 2020 for $610 million, and the latter in 2023 for $1.35 billion. (Investopedia) So, maybe he knows what he’s doing.

The description on the Maximum Effort website reads: “Maximum Effort makes movies, tv series, content, ads and cocktails for the personal amusement of Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds. We occasionally release them to the general public.” Reynolds’ projects like Deadpool and Welcome to Wrexham are listed, which makes me think it’s just a production company? Interesting, but I’m still left wondering how he benefits from the Kelce scheme. If State Farm suddenly gets a bump in insurance sales, does Maximum Effort take a cut? Does he just get to go to Chiefs and Eagles games for free forever now?

Whatever happens, he knows what’s good for him when it comes to his wife’s BFF. Maximum Effort and State Farm both say, “They were not poking fun at Swift, but rather acknowledging the viral moments from that weekend.”

“Once we had a good degree of confidence that everyone got the joke, and that there would be no issue, we were all very happy to proceed,” said Dewey, adding, “Marketing needs to feel less calculated, and that’s what speed and culture can help create.”