One of the most challenging aspects of business is that no matter how many people agree on a topic, only one person matters.
The decision maker.
The power of that individual is fully understood when you realize that it only takes one person at a company to decide not to support professional women’s sports despite the other seventeen million who say otherwise.
Oh, to have that power.
The power to ignore the obvious, the power to apply old rules to a new game, the power to be a marketer who markets to himself, and the power to say no.
NO is the most powerful word in business. It allows us to manage budgets. It supports our priority setting. It can clarify the organization of the lines of the box.
However, NO can also be a door opener for an organization. An organization filled with NO men will soon open plenty of doors for them to oblivion, obscurity, and obscurity.
So go ahead and say no to professional women’s sports. I dare you—all of women’s sports dare you.
However, if you want to say YES, the data you need is now available in the influential report It’s Time: Unlocking the Power of Pro Women’s Sports Fans, released by Canadian Women & Sport and research and consultancy partner IMI Consulting, sponsored by presenting partner Canadian Tire Corporation with support from Women and Gender Equality Canada.
This first-of-its-kind report reveals that two in three Canadians aged 13-65 are fans of women’s sports—equivalent to more than 17 million Canadians!
So get ready to say YES to professional women’s sports by rethinking how you, as a brand, approach sponsorship marketing.
Say YES to revamping how you evaluate sports sponsorships. Do not apply a traditional league model that reeks of impressions and value banks. Apply a progressive model where you measure the equity of a marketing partnership (I am referring to value here, not DEI) based on how the consumer values it. That is where the gold is in women’s sports.
Say YES to true partnership instead of the lip service that often exists in our business today. Move yourself from being a patron to an investor looking to commit to your partner’s long-term growth and understand the actual returns come down the road, not in the first month of activating. Speaking of which, say YES to activating at a 10X-20X ratio with women’s sports to balance your total investment with your traditional portfolio and reap the rewards.
Say YES to fully integrating women’s sports into every aspect of your business: recruitment, Employee Engagement, Channel Marketing, Industry Stakeholders, and Government Relations. Women’s Sports is not CSR, ESG, or DEI. It’s ROI. A women’s sports partnership can be integrated into how you operate your company and be much more than a communications strategy or marketing tactic.
What I am saying here isn’t new. Ask any person in the women’s sports business. Almost a decade ago, I was fortunate enough to create a fantastic national women’s sports platform for our clients at Dairy Farmers of Canada – Fuelling Women’s Sports – https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/new-multi-year-women-in-sport-strategy-launched-today-517476471.html. We were alone in the wilderness at the Time. But now, with tTimeWHL, Project 8, the WNBA and our Olympic/Paralympic teams, we are finally seeing the dream becoming a conscious reality.
The actual votes are in; it’s all right in the report – https://womenandsport.ca/pro-sports-2023-2/. However, there will still be some people who want to disbelieve what is in front of them. Let them. Let’s not worry about the NAYsayers, the NOmen, who are about to be NObody’s.
Instead, let’s celebrate the leader wise enough to understand what their consumers of today, tomorrow, and quite frankly yesterday have been asking for all along.
Notice I didn’t say brave when I describe the leader who says YES. When you have seventeen million supporters, it isn’t about bravery but listening.
It’s Time for your brand to unlock the power of pro women’s sports fans.
MH3
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