Great Clips’ recent promotion featuring Kirk Cousins and Jesse Palmer drove an 11.6% increase in sales. The salon’s new VP of marketing shares the highlights and strategy behind the campaign.
National Football League quarterback Kirk Cousins likes a value haircut at Great Clips, and the hair salon’s marketing team is using the organic praise to its advantage.
In July 2025, Netflix featured Cousins in its docu-series and he mentioned liking getting his hair cut at Great Clips. The brand jumped on the opportunity to have an NFL player influencer and signed a deal with him to be a spokesperson for the brand, said Traci Elder, Vice President of Marketing and Communications.
The most recent iteration of that was a promotion Great Clips ran for 24 days in January 2026 tied to the College Football Playoffs. The coupon offered a $9.99 haircut, which is roughly a 50% discount. This is a good incentive to spur consumers to get a haircut during a cold month when they are not as active about getting out, Elder said.
The spots include Cousins getting a haircut while former NFL player and current ESPN college football analyst Jesse Palmer narrates the actions. Palmer also is the current host of reality TV show The Bachelor, although it’s his football experience that is the most relevant, Elder said.
Coupon Campaign Boosts Hair Cuts
The promotion resonated with consumers, as Great Clips’ 4,400 salons had a 7.4% increase in customers during that window and an 11.6% increase in sales, Elder said. The increase in customers is the key metric that Great Clips focuses on, she said. The brand was happy that this increase bested the 2025 campaign, when the same promotion a year ago drove a 4.6% increase in customers, Elder said.
The star power of the campaign is one of the reasons for its success, Elder said. Even though Cousins is now a sponsored spokesperson for Great Clips, because he was already a customer and genuinely likes the brand, it comes across naturally to consumers, she said.
“Even if you check out his own social media, he posts organically about Great Clips,” she said. “Frequently we’ll get little posts of his kids and him being in the salon and he has a natural way about him that really resonates with the brand and resonates with his own brand love.”
More than 2 million consumers redeemed the coupon. While the campaign aimed to reach both new and existing customers, Great Clips was excited that 24% of consumers redeeming the coupons were new customers, up from about 21% last year, Elder said.
Great Clips Markets to Sports Fans Year Round
After this January promotion, Great Clips then launches campaigns in partnership with both the National Hockey League and the annual “March Madness” basketball tournament with the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
The NHL promotion is currently running, in which Great Clips is providing free haircuts for any NHL player who is traded and their families through March 6.
Elder could not disclose details about the NCAA commercials, only that it will feature top basketball players at Great Clips and an “iconic March Madness voice.”
These three sporting events are Great Clips’ main marketing campaigns for the year, Elder said.
“Those three tent pole activities allow us to connect with fans in really authentic and relevant ways,” she said. “We know that these are their passion points. We know that our target audience over indexes in these areas with their interests. So being able to put our brand in conjunction with those live events, those heightened emotional timeframes is really exciting for them to see that this is something that Great Clips loves and supports as well.”
After this, the next largest campaign for the brand is back-to-school.
Elder joined Great Clips in November 2025 and is now leading the team of 25 marketers. Prior to Great Clips, Elder was Vice President of Brand Strategy and Creative Expression at Purpose Brands, which owns fitness and wellness brands including Anytime Fitness, The Bar Method and Basecamp Fitness.