When professional soccer player Ali Riley landed her first brand deal—recording herself with a Flip camera to promote espnW in exchange for a few hundred bucks—she couldn’t believe she was being paid at all.

“When you’re not an influencer, by nature, by trade, it’s a little bit scary” to navigate brand partnerships, said Riley, who is captain of both the New Zealand women’s national team and Angel City FC, the LA-based National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team. In fact, Riley said there were times when she felt “taken advantage of” when she had less experience with sponsorships.

Now, Riley has quite a few more brand partnerships under her belt. In addition to espnW, she’s worked with Nike, collaborated with the Swedish brand Malmö Clothing Company, and struck a long-term partnership with Puma. This year so far, Riley has given a talk at an internal event at Anheuser-Busch and kicked off a partnership with the connected food company Tovala.

Riley’s roster of partners reflects a broader trend in sports marketing. Women’s sports viewership is heating up, with the WNBA and the NWSL both breaking viewership records last year, and brands are increasingly considering women athletes as brand ambassadors and partners.

“Most of us can’t make enough money to make a living, let alone save money, set aside money for retirement, invest money, buy property, so I think getting any type of supplemental income we can is important,” Riley told Marketing Brew.

Read the full story here.—AM

Here’s a tip if you ever find yourself chatting with Tabassum Zalotrawala, Chipotle Mexican Grill’s chief development officer, about the take-out windows they’ve dubbed “Chipotlanes”: Do not call them “drive-thrus.”

Drive-thrus typically refer to the system that dates back to the Packard era, where drivers roll up to a two-way speaker, order from a menu board, and proceed to the window to pay and receive the order.

“If we were talking about drive-thru windows, the conversation would be over because we don’t have any,” Zalotrawala told us at the onset of a recent interview. “All we have is digital pick-up windows.”

• Chipotlanes have no speakers or menu boards because their users have ordered and paid online (or through the Chipotle app).
• It takes an average of fewer than 30 seconds per order, Zalotrawala told Restaurant Dive, compared to a traditional drive-thru at Taco Bell, with an average service time of 221.99 seconds—the industry’s fastest in 2022 per QSR magazine—or Chick-fil-A, the slowest at 325.47 seconds.

More and more restaurants are trying to entice consumers to choose pickup—not that it takes much arm-twisting. For inflation-bedraggled consumers, picking up saves on delivery fees and tips, and they get their food faster and hotter than from a delivery driver. And for restaurants, pick-up saves the expense of third-party delivery providers.

Read more about Chipotle’s strategy here.—AAN

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