Rakuten has been something of a good luck charm for the Golden State Warriors…or maybe it’s the other way around.

Since the cashback company became the official jersey badge partner of the NBA team in 2017, the Warriors have won two championships, although they already had five under their belt before then. Rakuten, on the other hand, was significantly less well known in the US then than it is now, according to CMO Dana Marineau, with brand awareness growing from 23% in 2017 to 63% as of this year.

“I obviously cannot say it is the Warriors [sponsorship] that solely has skyrocketed our brand awareness,” Marineau told Marketing Brew. “Of course there are other things we have in market—there’s other advertising, the Super Bowl—but you cannot discredit how amazing that kind of awareness is, on a championship team.”

After Rakuten, a Japanese company, acquired Ebates in 2014, it ran into a problem: No one in the US had heard of Rakuten before, Marineau said. In the years since, the company has figured out that sports marketing is part of the solution.

Read the full story here.—AM

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It’s not just fans waking up at odd hours to watch the Women’s World Cup.

Marketers are likely just as interested in the tournament, which has seen record viewership, especially those working for the brands most heavily invested in the event, like Nike and Visa.

A report from sports and entertainment intelligence platform SponsorUnited examined which Women’s World Cup players see the most brand love, based on an analysis of about 230 brands, 120 athletes, and 900 social posts between July 1 of last year and this year.

Morgan mania: Alex Morgan, one of the captains of the US Women’s National Team, has 21 brand deals under her belt, per SponsorUnited, making her the most-endorsed player in the World Cup.

• Morgan has recently posted on behalf of Molecule Sleep, Spotify, and Nike, to name a few.
• Alisha Lehmann of Switzerland and Alexia Putellas of Spain follow Morgan with 11 brand deals each.
• Lehmann had the highest social engagement of any player in the tournament, outranking other players by almost four times per post.

“With a unique ability to captivate audiences and ignite engagement across diverse brands, Morgan epitomizes the tremendous potential of female athletes and their remarkable influence within sport,” Bob Lynch, founder and CEO of SponsorUnited, said in a statement.

Just do it: Nike is the most active brand in terms of Women’s World Cup endorsements, with 42. Adidas follows with 36, and Visa has 19, though SponsorUnited noted that Visa’s sponsorship programs, like its Team Visa initiative, “go far beyond traditional endorsements.”

Puma, Matchday, Lego, EA Sports, Mastercard, Cupra, and Pepsi Max round out the top 10.—AM

YouTube Shorts announced new content creation tools this week.

One of the main additions to the short-form video platform is a “Collab” feature, which lets users “record a Short in a side-by-side format” next to a YouTube video or other Short. It’s also introducing a feature that’ll place previews of live videos into the Shorts feed.

Users will also soon be able to add Q&A stickers to Shorts. The platform said it will begin testing “recomposition tools” over the next few weeks that aim to make it easier for users to turn YouTube videos into Shorts.

“I think it’s extremely smart on their part to start evolving their Shorts offering because a lot of the time, most of the creators actually repurpose their content…across multiple platforms,” Marina Chilingaryan, senior brand and community strategist at marketing agency NoGood, told us.

YouTube has been beefing up its Shorts offerings for some time now. During its Q2 earnings call, the company announced that 2 billion logged-in users watch YouTube Shorts every month, up from 1.5 billion in 2022. Last month, YouTube relaxed the eligibility requirements to join its Partner Program, giving more creators access to monetization tools like tipping.

The latest tools come as TikTok and Meta continue to bolster their short-form video offerings. Despite a slew of other short-form video platforms, Chilingaryan said the competition might not be as stiff as it seems.

“TikTok has become very saturated, and while initially it was the unicorn for fast growth and easy virality, that’s not the case anymore,” she said. “So it’s only natural that creators start diversifying their audiences and equally create on Reels, on Shorts, and on TikTok, which gives Shorts an opportunity to come and catch up with TikTok, which has pretty much has been the dominant force in the short-form video space.”—JS

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

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Count ’em up: A list of social media metrics for brands to track and understand.

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