This story is the fifth in a series on women leaders working to increase brand investment in women’s sports. Read the rest of the profiles here.

Bridget Sponsky, Ally Financial’s executive director of brand and sponsorship marketing, is a big cheerleader for brands investing in women’s sports. Luckily, she had experience from before she joined the financial services firm: She was a competitive cheerleader in high school.

“We battled a lot of those arguments: ‘Is cheerleading really a sport?’” Sponsky told Marketing Brew. “Always having to make the case for women’s sports was just part of how I grew up.”

Since joining Ally in 2008, Sponsky has further honed her skills making that case, elevating the company’s sports marketing from simple sponsorships to larger “brand acts” that aim to generate affinity for Ally and, more recently, encourage other major brands to sponsor women’s sports.

Starting off small: About 15 years ago, Ally CMO Andrea Brimmer was looking for a team to help with the rebranding of GMAC into Ally Financial, and gave Sponsky a call. Sponsky, who graduated with an advertising degree from Michigan State University in 2002, was at the time working on sports and entertainment marketing at IPG agency Campbell Ewald, with a focus on its Chevy account.

In Sponsky’s early years at Ally, sports sponsorships weren’t part of its marketing mix, and her sports marketing budget was small—“probably a quarter of a million dollars,” for a sponsorship, she said, which she allocated to the 2016 International Champions Cup. But it seemed to work: Ally started to see sports fans engage with its brand, Sponsky said, so she and Brimmer continued to build out their sports strategy.

Continue reading here.—AM

We all know consumer data is a powerful driver of decision-making across all lines of business—marketing strategy, media buying, and even product development. Still, the only problem is that it doesn’t always start with a complete view. Join us as we discuss vital lessons that help with a 360-degree view of customers.

Would you take a brand new pair of free tights in exchange for your old ones? Well, we know we would, and so did the thousands of customers who lined up across activewear brand Athleta’s in-store trade-in activations in NYC, Miami, Dallas, DC, and Chicago earlier this month.

The idea for this “one-day only” event was simple: bring in any pair of leggings from any brand and take home a complimentary new pair of Athleta’s Salutation Stash Tights.

That seemed to have struck a chord with consumers, who numbered close to 2,000 in New York, according to Shannon Damen, Athleta’s head of commerce and experience.

“We wanted to be able to engage with consumers and just get their thoughts in line and understand…qualitatively what they’re interested in and how they’re engaging,” Damen told Retail Brew.

• At the moment, the traded in tights are being recycled or resold through Athleta’s circularity partner, ThredUp, after which all resale profits will be donated to a women’s sports foundation.
• The brand said in a press release the donation amount is likely to be upwards of 2,700 pairs from a mix of longstanding and new customers the retailer was able to attract through the activation.

Read more on Retail Brew.—JS

Each week, Marketing Brew recaps what people are talking about on social media, the trends that took over our feeds, and how marketers are responding.

Surge of outrage: When Wendy’s CEO Kirk Tanner announced plans to introduce “dynamic pricing” at its restaurants next year, people were generally unhappy about the possibility of surge pricing at restaurants. Some people joked about reselling Baconators during off-peak hours, along with the bleak reality of having to bid on fast food instead of spending on things that were once affordable for young people, like, say, real estate. One person pointed out that Wendy’s could have avoided this by framing the price changes as off-peak deals instead. In a statement to CNN, the fast-food company clarified that it was “never our plan to raise prices when customers are visiting us the most.”

On the topic of food getting more expensive, people also weren’t thrilled at Kellogg’s CEO, Gary Pilnick, telling people to eat cereal for dinner to save money. One TikToker said “he’s not only managed to insult low-income families but [also] to push Kellogg’s cereal in one sentence.”

Clean slate: In response to social media posts about its bags getting dirty, luggage company Béis decided to host a luggage wash pop-up in LA and post cleaning how-to videos and infographics to show people that its products can have a second life. The brand also used the moment as an opportunity to plug its luggage cover. As one TikToker put it, Béis “just showed every single brand how to handle bad PR.”

Rigged deal: A trend circulated in the last week where people tried to trick their friends and loved ones into believing they got invited on a brand trip or got a job offer at an oil rig, for some reason. ExxonMobil was often the company cited, which got some thinking about the potential marketing opportunities for them and other brands, while others were a bit more skeptical about whether that was a good idea.

Continue reading here.—KH

Your guide to a cookieless world. The long-awaited phaseout of third-party cookies is finally upon us. In this new landscape, how can you reach your target audience without relying on user data? We partnered with StackAdapt to find out. Check out our three-step guide to marketing without cookies. Spoiler: AI plays a big role.

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Bloomberg profiled the production studio A24 and how it’s balancing its indie brand image with expansion.
• The Wall Street Journal covered Rent the Runway’s marketing-heavy regrowth plan following recent layoffs.
• Vox explored whether Skims campaigns have become as anticipated as glossy magazine cover reveals.