The cult of ‘Cold Palmer’ has reached America – can he become a global brand?

Cole Palmer is having quite a season.

Six goals in the eight Premier League matches, plus five assists. He has also been awarded the Premier League’s player of the month for September and England men’s player of the year for 2023-24.

Of the many signings made by Chelsea since the Behdad Eghbali-Todd Boehly consortium bought the club in May 2022 — spending more than £1billion ($1.3bn at current exchange rates) along the way — Palmer has been the greatest bargain. At £42.5m from boyhood club Manchester City on deadline day in September last year, he has been key to the London side’s transformation back into top-four contenders having finished 12th in 2022-23.

Now Palmer’s influence is spreading beyond the pitch, helped by a few factors: his terrific form, certainly, but also some quirks of his personality that lend themselves to social media traction, as well as his distinctive goal celebration and the nickname which comes with it.

Two recent events have illustrated the possibility of Palmer establishing himself beyond the confines of European football.

One came during the NFL’s promotion of the Minnesota Vikings-New York Jets game in London this month, when they could have turned to any Premier League player to help publicise it but chose Palmer. In a video posted on Instagram, Justin Jefferson, a star wide receiver for the Vikings known for his ‘griddy’ touchdown dance, held up a ‘Palmer 20’ Chelsea shirt and mimicked the England forward’s ‘cold’ goal celebration. It has more than 270,000 likes.

The other was when Trae Young, a point guard for the Atlanta Hawks and an NBA All-Star who happens to perform the same celebration as Palmer, was asked about sharing it with him. Young — who is nicknamed ‘Ice Trae’, hence the ‘cold’ move — talked about Palmer and the origins of the celebration, which was also recently mimicked by Gleyber Torres, a baseball player for the New York Yankees, who just qualified for the 2024 World Series.

“I hear he (Palmer) is a pretty good player,” Young told Podcast P. “I just did it. I kind of ran with it, I didn’t get it from nobody.”

Palmer, however, did get it from someone. Speaking to UK newspaper The Telegraph last week, he said: “It’s a nod to my former Manchester City academy team-mate Morgan Rogers (now in the first team at Aston Villa). It symbolises joy, passion and hard determination for the game, plus it’s funny as it works well with my name. Everyone knows it’s my celebration. Lots of people might have done it, but everybody knows it is my celebration.”

Indeed, Palmer has made it his own, in the UK at least.

Misha Sher, a board director at the European Sponsorship Association, tells The Athletic: “Visual identity is very important. If you are Cole Palmer and you have a celebration, and you are scoring all the time, those moments are frequent, so he can reinforce that unique visual identity all the time.

“And because of how easily these things get picked up and shared, you are seeing NFL players and even kids in the playground copying the celebration. It’s quite simple, but it’s very powerful in the world of building a brand.”

His nickname, too, seems to lend itself to spreading, particularly among the young audience: to many people, Cole Palmer is ‘Cold Palmer’.

He is also funny, often unintentionally. Whether asking Chelsea head coach Enzo Maresca why he is at their Cobham training ground or claiming not to know what is meant by AM and PM, viral clips of Palmer have endeared him to football fans and the wider public. It differentiates him and makes him more attractive than other players to businesses looking for help to sell products.

“There is no doubt that brands have their eye on him,” says Tim Crow, founder and CEO of Crow Business Services and an expert in sports marketing, tells The Athletic. “I have had a number of calls about him from clients.”

One brand to have already signed the 22-year-old Mancunian up is Burberry, the British luxury fashion house.

In the firm’s video below, Palmer, wearing a Burberry duffle coat, simply goes fishing. The England international walks into frame, sits down on a chair next to a rod, occasionally gets up and walks out of shot, only to sit back down, sometimes stretching out his legs, sometimes stroking his chin.

Not a word is said. The video lasts nine minutes and 34 seconds. It is very Cold Palmer.

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But is he a global brand yet?

“Cole has elevated himself in the world of football with his performances, and he clearly has a personality,” continues Sher. “But it’s too early to make any judgements or predictions about him becoming a brand. That requires someone, over an extended period, to have appeal outside of just the sport they play.

“The fact that he is getting those types of opportunities with Burberry strengthens his case and his ability to expand into popular culture, but in the past few years we’ve had Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling and other footballers who have featured in high-profile campaigns because of their relevance in that moment in time.

“We have clearly not seen these guys go on to become brands, and that is a really important distinction to make. Becoming a brand is not easy, and it requires longevity of that kind of relevance over time.”

Palmer also advertised boohooMAN, a fast-fashion retail company, on his Instagram page, where he has five million followers. He is also a Nike athlete and did promotional work for Electronic Arts (EA) for its popular FC football video games.

On TikTok, where he has more than two million followers, a video of him advertising Toshiba got more than four million views. However, another of him putting his PFA (Professional Footballers’ Association — the players’ trade union in the UK) Young Player of the Year trophy for 2023-24 in a fridge — a play on ‘Cold Palmer’ — was watched 36 million times, indicating how much greater an audience response is when they feel the content is authentic.

@colepalmer10

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♬ original sound – Cole Palmer

“What’s really interesting about him is that it doesn’t come across as planned,” adds Sher. “I don’t think he would have sat back and worked out the whole ‘Cold Palmer’ thing, it has organically happened, and that’s why it has taken off. But it is only a start, so you need to take that momentum and relevance and popularity that he currently has and build on it.”

Palmer’s online reach will be music to potential commercial partners’ ears as they look to maximise exposure for their products, although it is not yet wide enough to start attracting the multi-million-pound deals reserved for football’s most marketable stars.

“Seven-figure deals are a small category and they tend to be reserved for athletes who have longevity and appeal across multiple markets,” says Sher. “To command those deals, you need to have relevance outside of your home market, unless you’re American because the advertising market is so big and the budget is so big (in America).”

Footballers who get the biggest deals include David Beckham, Kylian Mbappe and Jude Bellingham, Palmer’s England team-mate. All have shown a track record in transcending their native audience through their performances on the pitch. Playing for Real Madrid, as all three of those do or did, helps too.

Bellingham, who is 13 months younger than Palmer but has been playing regularly at the top level for two years longer, has already featured in campaigns for designer label Louis Vuitton and modelled for Skims, a fashion brand owned by American celebrity Kim Kardashian, along with starring in Adidas adverts.

“Bellingham is playing for a huge club and in the Champions League, and that makes a huge difference,” adds Crow. “If someone like Adidas or Nike gets behind you and you get into the top tier of their campaigns, where you are featured in a global campaign, then that takes you to a whole other level and gets you noticed.”

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Many athletes have been on the brink of transcending their sport and have broken into popular culture, only for their subsequent performance levels to hold them back.

Manchester United and England forward Rashford, who has released multiple best-selling books as well as leading a successful campaign to force the UK government into a policy change over free school meals for children during the Covid-19 pandemic, has since struggled to move beyond his sport and follow in former United and England star Beckham’s footsteps.

But in a world where top footballers tend to be trained by media advisors to always say the right thing, to never be controversial (to the point of being a bit dull, frankly), staying true to yourself is a lot harder than it looks, and if he can keep these performances going, that could be what helps Palmer achieve what others never quite did.

“I can count on the fingers on one hand, over a one-month period, how many genuinely interesting (footballer) interviews there are,” says Crow. “Football thrives on controversy, but the communications and PR business inside football exists to put the lid on it. That’s the dilemma.”

Jack Grealish, another of Palmer’s England team-mates and a former colleague at City, is a great example of getting it right. What you see tends to be what you get with the 29-year-old from Birmingham; a cheeky chappie-type of character who knows how to have a laugh at his own expense — and the brand deals, including one with fashion house Gucci, are rolling in.

Sher and Crow believe that retaining his public personality is going to be crucial for Palmer.

“You have to start with what is true and authentic because people can smell inauthenticity a mile off,” says Crow. “They (Palmer’s representatives) are going to have lots of offers, but you have to pick your partners carefully.

“Authenticity is so important and picking the wrong partner and having a bad advertisement can set you back, so it is really important that you choose your partners carefully. The most important thing is: you are only as good as your last performance.”

GO DEEPER

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(Top photo: Palmer performs his ‘cold’ celebration after scoring against Spain in the Euro 2024 final; Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images)