This story is the second in a series about how marketers for sports teams and leagues around the world approach social media strategy. Read the first installment in the series here.

The Washington Spirit recently got a caffeine boost.

Trinity Rodman, the NWSL team’s star forward and one of the leading goal scorers in the Olympic women’s soccer tournament, brought home a gold medal. Rodman and fellow NWSL players Mallory Swanson and Sophia Smith were together responsible for 10 of the US women’s 12 goals, and the trio nicknamed themselves “triple espresso” amid a whole bunch of hype.

Some of the excitement has trickled down to the Spirit, which saw an increase in both social media followers and ticket sales in the hours and days following the gold-medal match, according to Brandon Clark, the team’s VP of marketing and communications.

“There was real demand from our core fan to document, to share everything [Olympics-related] from a Spirit perspective that we possibly could,” he told Marketing Brew. “But the real opportunity came in both servicing that part of our fan base, and really reaching a greater amount of people in our casual fan base.”

The Spirit is certainly capitalizing on Olympic content on social, but it’s not every day—or even every year—that the Olympics make one of the team’s players an international star. To keep old fans and new ones engaged year-round, the Spirit’s marketing team focuses on authenticity and personality online.

Continue reading here.—AM

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Less than three months out from Election Day, the Biden-Harris administration is embracing the social media network that connects the world’s professionals.

On Friday, the administration shared its first-ever post on LinkedIn, marking the first time the White House’s official account has embraced the platform.

The first post on the account, which already has around 67,000 followers, shared information from the White House Office of Digital Strategy about last week’s White House Creator Economy Conference, in which topics like mental health and pay equity were discussed and had roughly 100 creators in attendance.

LinkedIn joins X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and Threads as social media platforms that the administration posts on. The plan for the LinkedIn account is to post about issues the administration sees as relevant to the platform’s user base, including updates about the economy, job growth, and White House career opportunities.

“LinkedIn is home to a highly engaged and passionate audience,” Christian Tom, assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Digital Strategy, said in an email to Marketing Brew. “Moving forward, the Office of Digital Strategy plans to connect directly with that audience to bring awareness to the President’s accomplishments and progress that we know they care about, especially in areas like entrepreneurship, small business success, and the evolving digital landscape.”

Read more here.—JS

Who needs 12-foot-tall skeletons when you can sell ads?

Walmart and Target both told investors this month that their billion-dollar retail media networks were doing just fine, and had grown by double digits in the most recent quarter.

Open the books: Walmart’s ad business grew 26% globally in Q2, while its US business, Walmart Connect, grew 30%, the company reported last week. In February, Walmart said its advertising business grew to $3.4 billion in FY 2024.

Meanwhile, Target’s Roundel media network, which has been valued at roughly $1.5 billion, saw “double-digit growth” in the quarter and should end the year by growing in the “high teens” after the ads business grew more than 20% last year, Target CEO Brian Cornell told investors Wednesday during the company’s Q2 earnings call.

The company’s ad business has benefited from data collected by Target’s rebranded loyalty program, Target Circle, Chief Commercial Officer Rick Gomez said.

“Because of the invaluable insights we gained through Target Circle, we were able to offer four times more personalized offers as compared to a year ago,” Gomez said. “Those same insights fuel our Roundel media network.”

So what? Business is booming for retail media. It’s responsible for one-fifth of all digital media spend this year, and the category is expected to grow to a $166 billion business by next year, according to eMarketer. Amid the growth, it’s an increasingly crowded category, with competition from other retailers like Costco, services like Uber, and financial service providers like AmEx.

FWIW: Neither The Home Depot nor Lowes, which both operate retail media networks, broke out their advertising businesses in their quarterly earnings .—RB

Executive moves across the industry.

• Yeti CMO Paulie Dery left the company and has become the CMO of nutritional supplement brand AG1.
• Blizzard Entertainment hired former Linktree CMO Monica Austin as its new CMO.
• Disney tapped Adam Smith, formerly VP of product management at YouTube, to be chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN.