Several days a week, the women of Unrivaled—the player-founded, 3-on-3 basketball league—sweat it out in intense competition on the court. As is the way of pro athletes, they manage to do it while looking totally put together, in part thanks to Unrivaled sponsor Sephora’s glam room at the league’s headquarters in Miami, Florida.
Starting today, TNT Sports, Unrivaled’s multiyear media rights partner and an equity partner in the league, teamed up with Sephora to take the glam room on the road, the media company shared exclusively with Marketing Brew. The experience, dubbed the Sephora Glam Bus Tour, expands Sephora’s already multifaceted partnership with Unrivaled, while also promoting TNT Sports’ coverage of the rest of the Unrivaled season.
“One of the things that TNT Sports has continually strived to do is take a creative approach with our marketing partners,” said Stefanie Rapp, SVP of sports strategy at TNT Sports parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. “The beauty of this is taking the idea of beauty, fashion, [and] culture, and weaving it into basketball…It’s a first to market.”
Along for the ride
As part of its Unrivaled sponsorship, Sephora has branding throughout the Unrivaled HQ, as well as content integrations with TNT Sports and its Bleacher Report property, Rapp said. The bus tour will open up new experiential elements of the sponsorship, providing fans in South Florida with the opportunity to get glammed up like the players.
The bus, which is making its first stop at the Sephora Arena tonight and concluding its trip at the University of Miami on March 2, gives fans access to beauty stations, product samples, giveaways, and photo opportunities on a first-come, first-serve basis, according to TNT Sports. Content from the tour will be featured in TNT Sports’ broadcast coverage of Unrivaled and on Bleacher Report’s social channels.
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The campaign also includes an out-of-home component in partnership with self-driving delivery platform Coco Robotics; the company’s delivery vehicles in Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago are set to be wrapped with Unrivaled and TNT Sports branding for about a month.
For TNT Sports, the effort is largely focused on brand awareness and driving conversations, Rapp told us.
“I want people talking about it,” she said. “I want there to be a social virality moment to it.”
Mobile home
The glam bus is set to hit the road during the latter half of Unrivaled’s second season, which according to Rapp, has come with rising viewership along with record attendance as the league has started to play some games outside of Florida, where it is based. Unrivaled’s inaugural road game in Philadelphia brought more than 21,000 fans to Xfinity Mobile Arena, a record for the venue, and the league is bringing its semifinals to the Barclays Center in Brooklyn following the success of the Philly games.
Rapp said she’s eager to see Unrivaled continue to expand to other venues around the country, adding that brand partners have expressed interest in experiential and fan-engagement campaigns with Unrivaled outside of Miami.
The glam bus, or some iteration of it, could become a reoccurring experience in future seasons, and as awareness of the league grows, the TNT Sports team is considering leaning into campaigns more focused on teams than individual players, Rapp said. Heading into the spring, she said, Unrivaled “will absolutely be a big part of our upfront strategy,” and she and her team are also focused on continuing to experiment with existing sponsors like Sephora.
“Making sure that we’re creative and innovative in whatever we’re doing to dimensionalize that fan experience is really what we’re after,” Rapp said.
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