This Women’s History Month, give the women in your life something special: money. If you’re a brand, you might consider putting that money toward women’s sports.

Some already are: Professional women’s sports sponsorships grew 20% year over year in 2022, according to sports and entertainment intelligence platform SponsorUnited. Still, media coverage and marketing dollars continue to favor men’s sports.

• Speaking at a conference last week, Colie Edison, SVP and chief growth officer of the WNBA, said despite raising $75 million from investors last year—much of which is going to “digital products, brand awareness, and fan engagement activations”—the league ultimately still needs “more partners to step up.”

Brands looking to associate with women’s athletics often do so through traditional sponsorships, from paying pro (and, more recently, collegiate) athletes for sponsored posts to sponsoring entire leagues, which can come with things like stadium naming rights. But as women’s sports fandom grows, execs at brands and leagues are thinking outside the box about partnerships and marketing strategies that are more substantive.

Off-court work

The WNBA has been working with a handful of major brands to get them more involved.

• In 2020, the league announced its Changemakers platform, which is dedicated to “establishing a two-way partnership” with companies like AT&T and Deloitte, Edison said last week at the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) 2023 Summit on Female Leadership in Sport.
• Not only do brands in the program pay for traditional sponsorships, but they’ve also pledged to help the league in other ways: Google played a role in ensuring broadcast-TV slots for all WNBA playoff games, Edison said, and the company is serving as the presenting sponsor of the league’s ESPN broadcasts this season.
• US Bank is “teaching financial literacy to the players,” and Nike serves as the league’s outfitter in addition to helping with youth basketball initiatives, according to Edison.

Continue reading here.—AM

Each Tuesday, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Stephanie Feldman is CMO at Power Digital, a growth marketing firm. Throughout her career, she’s held marketing roles at PwC, Mirum Agency, and J. Walter Thompson Worldwide.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? While I’m still relatively new to Power Digital, so far one of my favorite initiatives has been watching our partnerships team broker a relationship for our food client A Dozen Cousins and Marvel for the release of Wakanda, featuring branded packaging, Wakanda-style, to drive brand lift and recognition.

Our TikTok business is booming across industries, which makes it easy to finally explain to my family what I do for a living. It’s great to see a channel that is so compelling from an entertainment standpoint deliver for brands in big ways across brand awareness and conversions.

In my prior roles, one of my most memorable projects included rebuilding Oakley’s global social media structure, and building a creative platform for Hot Pockets where we brought an oven to a brand meeting that would “heat while you tweet.”

What’s your favorite ad campaign? P&G’s commercial about moms being there for their kids in the toughest of life moments—and showing them that things will be okay even in the weakest or uncontrollable times—is one of my all-time favorites. Part emotional, all grit, this ad truly shows the power of confidence, positive reinforcement, and how important influential people are in our lives.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile? I have three boys that teach me new things about life every day. And my third came out a red-headed, blue-eyed wonder, while the other two have brown hair and brown eyes. I did think about dressing him up as Chucky for Halloween.

What’s one marketing-related podcast, social account, or series you’d recommend? For business overall: Wisdom from the Top with Guy Raz. Stories of crisis, failure, and triumph from some of the greatest leaders of the world.

Metaverse Fashion Week 2022 spanned three days in virtual world Decentraland. The event featured more than 60 brands and Web3 projects, and included shops, fashion shows, and phygital sales. Dolce & Gabbana’s catwalk featured cat models, and Grimes performed live. And the whole thing came together in just three months.

When Head of Metaverse Fashion Week Giovanna Casimiro joined Decentraland in 2021, the wheels were already in motion to get a virtual fashion week off the ground.

“There is already an established economy of wearables in the platform,” she told Retail Brew. “There were already established designers creating 3D clothing and people consuming 3D clothing in that ecosystem.” Read the full story on Retail Brew here.—MA

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Map it out: This guide to customer journey maps explains what they are, the different types, and how to make one.

Make a plan: This quick and easy content plan (in infographic form, of course) has some ideas to spruce up your channels.

Follow the leader: Find strategies for generating leads across social platforms here.

Real-time data: With Signals, Tagger’s social intelligence engine, marketers can leverage valuable data and insights to research industry trends, optimize creative content, grow social followings, and drive campaign results.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Jamie Lee Curtis, who won her first Oscar on Sunday, was the longtime spokesperson for Dannon’s Activia. For how many years was she a brand ambassador for the yogurt brand?

1. Five years
2. Seven years
3. Nine years
4. 11 years

Keep scrolling for the answer.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Agencies are still split on what the future of work looks like
• Melissa Hobley puts her touch on Tinder’s first global campaign
• Kroger spent millions advertising it own peanut butter—why?