{"id":21578,"date":"2024-09-30T22:36:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T22:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21578"},"modified":"2024-09-30T22:36:53","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T22:36:53","slug":"why-carmax-went-all-in-on-the-wnba-and-how-its-paying-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21578","title":{"rendered":"Why CarMax \u2018went all in\u2019 on the WNBA\u2014and how it\u2019s paying off"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When used-car retailer CarMax underwent a brand repositioning a few years ago, it turned to one of the trendiest sports in the country to do it.<\/p>\n

The company wanted to be seen as more online and was generally seeking to modernize its image, CMO Sarah Lane said. Enter basketball.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a place where younger people are, [has] a very diverse audience, and [is] certainly very connected with culture\u2014sneaker culture, fashion culture, all the things that are great to align with if you\u2019re trying to modernize something,\u201d Lane said.<\/p>\n

CarMax was named the official auto retailer of both the NBA and WNBA in December 2020, when WNBA sponsorships were less common. As the league\u2019s record 2024 season wraps up and interest in women\u2019s basketball continues to reach all-time highs, CarMax\u2019s once-novel partnership is paying off, Lane said.<\/p>\n

Good old days<\/h2>\n

Since CarMax started working with the NBA and the W, the brand has featured athletes from both leagues in its ads. One series of the brand\u2019s early basketball spots starring Golden State Warriors point guard Steph Curry and WNBA legend Sue Bird went viral in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a bunch of earned media for that spot, and people were talking about it all over the place,\u201d Lane said. \u201cWe were like, \u2018Oh, my gosh, this really is striking a chord and saying something about us that I think is hard for us to say about ourselves\u2019…From that point, we said, \u2018This is more than just advertising.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, CarMax got more strategic pushing into women\u2019s sports, Lane said. In 2022, CarMax became the first official auto retailer of the NWSL and the presenting sponsor of the NWSL Shield award. Around that time, the brand also added W teams like the New York Liberty, the Phoenix Mercury, and the Washington Mystics to its sponsorship roster.<\/p>\n

All of those sponsorships are carefully measured, Lane said. \u201cWe make sure that the dollars are working for us,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a business, at the end of the day. This is absolutely not a charity, and so we are looking at every little nook and cranny of the buys.\u201d<\/p>\n

Change up<\/h2>\n

Last year, CarMax joined the WNBA\u2019s Changemakers program, a group of six brands committed to elevating the league and its players through marketing and other collaboration beyond financial support. As part of the program, CarMax has provided media and brand partnership training sessions for athletes, including for around a dozen rookies this year, Lane said.<\/p>\n

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Changemakers get sponsorship assets like on-court logo placements, and this year for the first time, CarMax activated at WNBA All-Star Weekend in Phoenix, Arizona, \u201ca really important market for us,\u201d Lane said. The brand hadn\u2019t previously done many event sponsorships, and Lane said she saw it as a learning opportunity, but it still exceeded expectations: At least 5,000 people stopped by CarMax\u2019s space over the weekend, and the brand also saw about 700,000 social media impressions on its All-Star content.<\/p>\n

Lane is still waiting on results of the W sponsorship from this season, but said she expects viewership to have \u201cfar exceeded everything that we thought it would when we planned for all of this\u201d and feels confident the brand\u2019s metrics are trending upward. Media equivalency is a particularly important measure of ROI for the brand, as are social impressions, which have \u201cexploded\u201d lately, Lane said. CarMax also conducts brand affinity studies among fans of the league and the teams it sponsors, which have historically shown \u201coutsized growth\u201d for its women\u2019s sports sponsorships, including a 20% higher lift associated with the WNBA versus the NBA, she said.<\/p>\n

Lane has high hopes for the postseason: Unanimous league MVP A\u2019ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces and Sabrina Ionescu of the Liberty, who are both Olympic gold medalists, star in CarMax\u2019s latest ads alongside Bird that have been airing this season. The timing is especially fortuitous, since both the Aces and the Liberty made the second round of the playoffs, where they\u2019re currently facing off in a repeat of last year\u2019s finals.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur ads will play very nicely next to both of those teams as they take that journey,\u201d Lane said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When used-car retailer CarMax underwent a brand repositioning a few years ago, it turned to one of the trendiest sports in the country to do it. The company wanted to be seen as more online and was generally seeking to modernize its image, CMO Sarah Lane said. Enter basketball. \u201cIt\u2019s a place where younger people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"\nWhy CarMax \u2018went all in\u2019 on the WNBA\u2014and how it\u2019s paying off | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When used-car retailer CarMax underwent a brand repositioning a few years ago, it turned to one of the trendiest sports in the country to do it.The\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21578\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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