We spoke with Ally’s chief marketing officer, Andrea Brimmer, about the “vicious cycle” plaguing women’s sports — and what corporations can do to break it.
Andrea Brimmer has always believed in the potential of women’s sports — that they were just as thrilling as men’s games, sorely underappreciated, and if given the chance, would develop a ravenous following. But for a long time, she’s known that raising the status of the women’s game would take work.
In the mid-80s, when Brimmer was a midfielder for Michigan State University, she helped petition to bring women’s soccer to the Big Ten. Now, as Ally Bank’s chief marketing and PR officer, she’s pushing for change on a much larger scale. Thanks in large part to Brimmer and her team, which is composed of several former female athletes, the financial services company has become one of the major players when it comes to increasing the visibility of the National Women’s Soccer League, the Women’s National Basketball Association, and an array of women’s collegiate sports.
Last year, Ally announced its 50-50 pledge to spend as much in advertising and sponsorships for men’s sports as it does for women within a five-year period. It’s an ambitious objective, Brimmer admits, because, despite advances, the footprint of female athletics remains so much smaller.
To fulfill that pledge, Brimmer says she’s had to get creative. At times that’s meant working with TV networks to create opportunities, like pushing them to broadcast the NWSL championship during primetime or getting at the root of the problem by attacking what she refers to as the “vicious cycle” plaguing women’s sports. We spoke to Brimmer about how brands (and the collective billions they pour into advertising) can move the needle when it comes to supporting female athletes, what more can be done to level the playing field, and more.
“I’d say we’re at an inflection point,” she says. More brands are “coming forward” and slowly “creating that systemic change.”
Katie Couric Media: Why has Ally decided to take on this cause of promoting women’s sports?
Brimmer: I think there were a couple of insights that were important to us. First of all, as a company, we value diversity, equity, and inclusion. And we lean heavily on living our values. Second, 94 percent of C-suite women played sports at some point leading up to their career, and 54 percent played at the collegiate level — myself included. So you can see how sports creates a pipeline of business leaders. As a bank, we have a responsibility to create economic mobility to change the trajectory of people’s lives. So pairing that responsibility with an activation that delivers outsized returns made a lot of sense for us, and it really has become a paramount part of our strategy.
What’s the brand doing now to expand women’s sports coverage?
The most important initiative we have now is the 50-50 pledge. That pledge is to spend equally, for every dollar that we invest in men’s sports media, to invest equally in women’s sports media over a 5-year time horizon. The time period was purposefully chosen to highlight the unavailability of media in the women’s sports space. Today, women’s sports receive less than 10 percent of the media coverage. So the pledge is really meant to root out some of the systemic issues that exist that need to be changed.
Additionally, we sponsor the NWSL as well as the player’s association. We also recently announced a partnership with the Sports Innovation Lab to create what we’re calling the Women’s Sports Club. The idea behind that is to bring brands together to identify the biggest issues in women’s sports and to work together in a cohesive manner to increase media coverage and opportunities.
Companies have said for a long time that they can’t justify spending ad money on the WNBA or other pro women’s leagues because there just isn’t enough media coverage. You believe this is misguided. Why?
We call it the vicious cycle. I talk about it all the time. Basically, it starts with the unavailability of coverage and, frankly, bad time slots, like running a game at 9 p.m. or midnight when no one’s going to watch it. As a result, brands don’t see the value of investing because the audiences aren’t there. The trickle-down effect of that is that leagues are undervalued compared to their male counterparts, which means the players are underpaid.
That’s changing. I’d say we’re at an inflection point where brands like Ally, Google, Michelob Ultra, Aflac, Nike, and Puma are all coming forward and insisting on more and more coverage. And they’re bringing dollars with them to create that systemic change. A great example of this is when we worked with CBS to get the NWSL’s championship game moved to prime time. It was the first time in the history of women’s sports that a championship game had been played in that slot. You saw a 70 percent increase in viewership just by moving it. The game drew a little under a million viewers. So when you give women the time slots that they deserve, the audience will be there.
From a financial perspective, have these investments for Ally paid off?
Absolutely. We’re over-indexing on awareness with women, on likability, and on positive sentiment. And we’re starting to see that translate into account acquisitions and favorability among female consumers. Our dollar goes further from a media investment standpoint. When we invest there, the space isn’t as crowded, so you have the ability to break through in a greater way than you do in men’s sports.
You mentioned that you’re working with TV networks to see that women’s games are broadcast in better time slots. Have they been receptive?
I give ESPN a lot of credit. I think they’ve definitely led the charge. When they launched ESPN W many, many years ago, that was groundbreaking. I think for the networks, it requires a mind shift, and that’s the hardest part. I think organizationally, they have to figure out how to get it done. There hasn’t been an unwillingness to do it, it just takes work. They’re working through the internal gymnastics of making it happen, but it takes a lot of time to put these deals together because they’ve never been done before. But I think everyone we’ve talked to, whether it’s NBC, CBS, ESPN, or Disney, they all see the value in it and are quickly moving toward how to monetize and capitalize on the momentum around women’s sports right now.
I’m curious if the NCAA’s new policy allowing student-athletes to be compensated for use of their name, image, and likeness (NIL) has helped create more visibility for women’s athletics.
It’s a double-edged sword. The positive side is that it puts money directly into the pockets of female athletes, who otherwise wouldn’t have benefitted other than through their scholarships. The downside is that many of the people, whether groups or individual boosters, are investing in NIL deals with the money they used to put directly into athletic funds that supported teams across the spectrum — including those that don’t generate money for schools. So athletic departments, across many universities, are trying to figure out how to shore up those sports programs. That’s putting a lot of women’s sports at risk.
What types of sports campaigns does Ally have planned next?
We’ve been thinking a lot about how we can activate around the World Cup this summer. We recently met with the U.S. Soccer Federation, with Cindy Parlow Cone and her team to see if there’s an opportunity there. You’re going to see us really start to invest more in female athletes directly, too. We want to create a lot of content around players so that we can start to bring to life their stories and boost fandom.
