> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Somebody drew it - URL: https://giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io/somebody-drew-it/ - Published: 2026-10-01T14:17:16.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-01T14:17:16.000Z - Description: NBC Sports launched its NBA season with a comic book drawn by two career Marvel and DC artists, in a year when a prompt gets you that look in ninety seconds. Hiring the hands is the entire campaign. Here is the version a brand with eleven hundred followers runs this week. - Author: giovanni gallucci - Tags: Organic Social, Brand Positioning, Packaging *Listen to this episode of The Daily Trends Report, then use the piece below.* A network holding NBA rights launched its season yesterday with drawings. [NBC Sports](https://www.nbcsports.com/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) unveiled a comic book campaign for the 2026-27 season. Jalen Brunson, Victor Wembanyama, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jayson Tatum, Stephen Curry and LeBron James all rendered as superheroes, with a spotlight for every one of the thirty teams. The comic is called Tip Off. Mike Tirico narrates the video piece. It all runs ahead of the American Express NBA Tip-Off tripleheader on October 20, and [the press release went out yesterday](https://www.nbcsports.com/pressbox/press-releases/slam-bam-jam-nbc-sports-unveils-comic-book-campaign-featuring-all-30-nba-teams-in-celebration-of-american-express-nba-tip-off-on-oct-20?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io). The part that matters is who held the pencil. They hired Ryan Benjamin and Ryan Odagawa, career Marvel, DC and WildStorm artists. Real people with real hands, in a year when any intern can get that look out of a prompt in about ninety seconds. [Adweek covered the build](https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/nbc-sports-turns-nba-athletes-into-comic-book-heroes-for-a-super-second-season/?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) yesterday afternoon. Then they printed it and put it in rooms. The campaign debuts publicly at [ComplexCon in Los Angeles](https://www.complexcon.com/marketplace/nbc-sports-x-nba?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) this Saturday and Sunday, October 3 and 4, inside a walk-up newsstand built to look like an old city corner stand, handing out free copies with photo spots, surprise drops and meet-and-greets. The comics show up again at New York Comic Con starting October 8\. A ten-foot comic book installation moves around Manhattan after that and parks at Rockefeller Center on the 19th and 20th. That is the news. Here is what it is worth to you if what you have is a shelf, a phone and no media budget. ## Somebody drew it The value in that campaign is not the comic book look. The look is the cheapest thing in the world right now. The value is that two named artists sat down and made it, and you can tell. Generate the same style and you have bought the surface of the idea and thrown away the only part that was worth paying for. Run the feed in your head. Scroll your own category for ninety seconds and count what you see: clean renders, nice light, somebody smiling at a bottle, drone over a field, slow pour in slow motion. Competent motion pouring out of one faucet, and the faucet is free now. Everybody got told to make more video, the tools got cheap, and the whole category arrived at the same place at the same time wearing the same shirt. A drawing stops the thumb because it reads as labor. You can see a decision in every line, including the lines that are slightly wrong. A photograph of your product still reads as a product shot, and the brain files a product shot under advertising before the caption loads. That is not nostalgia talking. It is proof that a person spent an afternoon. The objection I hear on this one is that illustration doesn't perform. Illustration doesn't perform in a feed full of illustration. In a feed full of motion it is the brake. Performance is always relative to what sits next to you, and almost nobody checks what sits next to them before they approve a concept. ## Three decisions for a brand with eleven hundred followers A county creamery is not hiring a Marvel artist. It doesn't need to. Strip the budget out of what NBC did and three decisions are left, and all three are available this week. First, a human hand. Find an illustrator inside your own county. She is underbooked, she is probably on Instagram with four hundred followers and a linocut, and she will charge you a tenth of what you think. Pay her properly and pay her by the piece. Second, one recurring subject, and not your logo. Your logo is already drawn and nobody wants a second look at it. Draw the delivery truck. The oldest machine in the building, the one that scares the new hire. The dog. The regular who has been coming in since 1994 and will absolutely let you draw him if you ask while he is sitting there. Third, the physical version, which is the one everybody skips and the one NBC spent real money on. A ten-foot installation at Rockefeller Center scales down to a hand-painted sandwich board. A chalkboard somebody redraws every Friday. A mural on the side of your own building. One drawn label on a single production run. The only requirement is that it exists in space and that it sits where people already have their phones out, which means your front door, your booth, your taproom, your market table. That last one is the cheapest content any brand ever gets. You make one object. Other people make the next four hundred pictures of it, they tag you, and their pictures are better than yours because there are people in them. Nobody photographs a post. Everybody photographs an object. Then number it out loud. One of twelve. The count does work a caption cannot, because it tells a stranger there is a next one and it puts a deadline on you. One beautiful drawing is a nice Tuesday. Twelve of them is a reason to follow. One warning, and it is the whole thing. Do not generate it and call it commissioned. People can tell, they can tell faster every month, and the day somebody catches you the asset inverts and takes the rest of your feed with it. The craft is the claim. If you are not paying for the craft, don't make the claim. ## Copy you can paste today Post it with the drawing, not with a photo of the drawing next to the product. Swap the bracketed parts for yours and leave the rest alone. "This is \[her first name\]. She lives eleven miles from us and she drew our \[1974 delivery truck\] in ink on her kitchen table. One of twelve. We are commissioning one a month for the next year, same subject every time, and the last one gets printed on a label. No AI touched this. She will tell you so herself." Second caption, for the day the physical version goes up. "There is a \[hand-painted board\] by the front door now. It changes every Friday. Take a picture of it, tag us, and we will put the best one on the next board." ## The still One frame, shot on the phone you already have. The drawing on a work surface, not held up to the camera, with the artist's hand still in frame and the pen or brush still in it. Daylight from a window, no flash, no ring light. Leave the eraser crumbs, the coffee ring and the three rejected versions underneath. Shoot straight down or at a slight angle, not perfectly square, because perfectly square reads as a catalog. One accurate color in the frame as an object instead of a filter, a yellow mug or a yellow marker barrel, and nothing else staged. Do not add text on the image. The caption carries the words. ## The video, 15 to 30 seconds, shoot it the same day Six shots, one location, one take each, no script and no voiceover. Shot one, two seconds: blank paper and a hand picking up the pen. Shot two, four seconds: the first line going down, camera close enough to hear the nib. Shot three, five seconds: a hard cut to the drawing about halfway finished, same angle, so the jump does the work. Shot four, four seconds: the real subject in the room, the truck or the machine or the dog, framed the same way the drawing frames it. Shot five, five seconds: the artist's face for one beat while she looks at it, no dialogue, and cut the instant she is done looking. Shot six, four seconds: the finished drawing going up on the wall by the front door, hands pressing the tape. Natural sound only. The pen, the room, the tape. No music bed, no captions burned on, no logo sting at the end. The second you decorate it, the viewer stops believing the hand. Run it as a standing slot. Same shape, same week of the month, twelve times. The subject is different every time and the format never changes, which is how one idea feeds a year instead of a Tuesday. ## The show is the briefing This piece came out of this morning's episode, where the NBC campaign landed next to a Circana read on sour flavor and fifteen years of one creator re-cutting the same show for five platforms. The briefing is the show. The article is the extension. The post is what you actually do with it. Subscribe on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-trends-report/id1896763846?i=1000785549310&ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) or [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033jcZwbZNGKpeUTRJvt1J?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) and it is waiting before you open the laptop. I write about brand voice and content systems for food and beverage brands on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/galluccinet?ref=giovanni-gallucci.ghost.io) every weekday.