{"id":21667,"date":"2024-11-01T00:21:48","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T00:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21667"},"modified":"2024-11-01T00:21:49","modified_gmt":"2024-11-01T00:21:49","slug":"deloitte-is-upping-the-ante-on-its-womens-sports-sponsorships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21667","title":{"rendered":"Deloitte is upping the ante on its women\u2019s sports sponsorships"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">Deloitte Global and US CMO Suzanne Kounkel was among the millions of fans celebrating the night the New York Liberty won the WNBA Championship, but not for the same reason Liberty fans were.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">On the night of Game 5, Spike Lee was seated directly behind a Deloitte logo on the court at Barclays Center and was at one point photographed on his hands and knees right above it as he watched the nail-biting finals matchup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">The front-and-center placement of Deloitte\u2019s logo in the midst of the deciding game meant that Kounkel\u2019s phone was blowing up throughout the night, she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">Deloitte isn\u2019t a consumer-facing company, but the average fan of popular women\u2019s leagues like the WNBA and the NWSL may be familiar with the brand thanks to the many years it has been splashed on basketball courts and around soccer stadiums as part of a more than decade-long effort to make inroads into the sports space.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">As Deloitte tracks brand amplification like the kind it saw during the WNBA Finals, it is expanding into women\u2019s sports even further as the sponsorship landscape in the space continues to crowd.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 iXLyLj\">Team pride<\/h2>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">Deloitte\u2019s history with sports sponsorships dates back about 15 years, according to Kounkel. Golf and tennis were among the first sports the consultancy tied up with, she said, followed by soccer and basketball.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">Deloitte has been a sponsor of US Soccer since 2019, including as a foundational sponsor of the organization\u2019s SheBelieves platform. In 2020, the company inked its first exclusively women\u2019s sports deal as part of the WNBA\u2019s Changemakers program, Kounkel said, and then signed on with the NWSL in 2021. Deloitte is also a Worldwide Olympic Partner through 2032.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">While those relationships offer significant international reach, Kounkel said her team likes to keep its number of sports partnerships to a manageable size.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">\u201cIt\u2019s not like we\u2019re only supporting two organizations,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s also not like we\u2019re supporting 45, because we do believe that that requires a level of investment and commitment that we can\u2019t spread too wide.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">To evaluate returns on those sports investments, Kounkel said she looks at traditional brand metrics like reach and awareness. Deloitte\u2019s 2023 WNBA campaign, for example, generated an estimated 17 million views on ESPN during last year\u2019s playoffs and finals, according to the company.<\/p>\n<div class=\"style__InlineSubscribeWrapper-sc-b0c0fc32-1 CuWWT inline-subscribe\">\n<div id=\"inline-subscribe\" class=\"style__Container-sc-6fdcc87e-0 style__RoundedContainer-sc-fdc976c-0 iTWzCH dtoEFc\">\n<h5 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 ihCJdN inline-subscribe\">Get marketing news you&#8217;ll actually want to read<\/h5>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 dYyRKJ inline-subscribe\">Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">Kounkel also places high value on client and employee sentiment around sponsorships, a KPI she said \u201cis sometimes missed\u201d by marketers. In other words, employees and clients sharing partnership news via their own channels is an indication that \u201cwe\u2019re onto something,\u201d she said\u2014as is rising client interest in access to Deloitte\u2019s hospitality suites at games.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">\u201cWe think about [our sponsorships] through the lens of: \u2018Does it make our people proud and our clients loyal?\u2019\u201d Kounkel said.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 iXLyLj\">Warrior mindset<\/h2>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">As a consultancy, Deloitte advises clients on sports sponsorships of their own, Kounkel said, and though she\u2019s not personally consulting for clients, she often fields questions from other CMOs about how to get into sports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">What does she tell them? \u201cThink about what would be distinctive about what you would do with that partnership that others couldn\u2019t do,\u201d Kounkel said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">That mindset helped inform the Athena Pledge, one of Deloitte\u2019s latest initiatives in women\u2019s sports. The pledge was co-created by Deloitte, AT&amp;T, Capital One, and Cisco in an effort to encourage other brands to increase their spending on women\u2019s sports, the latest corporate pledge focused on furthering investment in the space.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">There\u2019s no specific financial commitment associated with the Athena Pledge, Kounkel said. Instead, the companies involved\u2014all of which are already invested in women\u2019s sports\u2014pledged to help increase the number of other marketers doing the same, all in unique ways, she said. So far, Deloitte has published research exploring some of the opportunities and barriers around brands sponsoring women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">Ideally, the founding brands are aiming to get a total of 20 companies to take the pledge by 2028, Kounkel said, though she said she expects the number will be higher than that.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dist__StyledText-sc-58446f3e-12 zHahJ\">\u201cWe want to solidify and capitalize on the moment,\u201d she said. \u201cThe first core piece of it is all around helping people understand what the opportunity is, and then helping them make decisions that would encourage them to get in the boat [and] stay in the boat. It\u2019s about expanding the pie.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketingbrew.com\/stories\/2024\/10\/31\/deloitte-womens-sports-sponsorships-athena-pledge-wnba-nwsl?utm_source=&#038;utm_medium=syndication&#038;utm_campaign=feed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deloitte Global and US CMO Suzanne Kounkel was among the millions of fans celebrating the night the New York Liberty won the WNBA Championship, but not for the same reason Liberty fans were. On the night of Game 5, Spike Lee was seated directly behind a Deloitte logo on the court at Barclays Center and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Deloitte is upping the ante on its women\u2019s sports sponsorships | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Deloitte Global and US CMO Suzanne Kounkel was among the millions of fans celebrating the night the New York Liberty won the WNBA Championship, but not\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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