Top 5 Women's Sport Trends of 2019
2019 saw a new era for women’s sport
To say women’s sport has had a big year would be a gross understatement. In the competitive arena we saw the US Women’s National Team claim their 4th World Cup title, the Netball World Cup final come down to a one point thriller, Simone Biles break the world record (man or woman) for the most gymnastic’s championships. In tennis we saw 15-year-old Coco Gauff break through and pretty much out of nowhere Australian Ash Barty claimed the world number one spot. Out of the stadium, it's been even bigger with pink hair, revolts over maternity leave contracts, controversy over goal celebrations, spats with presidents, pay equity disputes, record sponsorship deals, marketing spend the same as the men’s, increased media support and audiences like we’ve never seen before.
Brands have capitalized on these big moments and the rise of women’s sport and we’ve seen a number of consistent themes appear throughout the year. Here are the top five trends that Team Heroine have seen in 2019.
Read 2021’s FIVE trends that are supercharging women’s sport success HERE
The 5 biggest women’s marketing and sponsorship trends
1. Standing for something - female empowerment and equality
91% of consumers are more likely to buy from brands that support a cause and as a consequence we are seeing a rise in marketing campaigns centred around the social values brands back. Women’s sport offers brands wide opportunities to showcase the causes they are fighting for - female empowerment, equality and diversity as a start and we saw a high proportion of brands go down this route.
“Don’t change your dream, change the world”
The big name brands led the charge with these issues using inspiration as their core lever. Nike was the stand out and smartly claimed 2019 as the ‘Year of the woman’ and had an overarching theme around ‘Dream’ that helped tackle gender bias in women’s sport. Launching with their Dream Crazier execution which was narrated by mega Heroine, Serena Williams they called out the double standards in sport and followed up with their FIFA World Cup campaigns including Dream Further which ended with the powerful line ‘Don’t change your dream, change the world’ and their Dream With Us sponsorship of the US women’s team. We saw their key competitor, Adidas come out on pay equity using their sponsorship of the Women’s World Cup to offer their Adidas sponsored female athletes the same performance bonuses of their male counterparts. They also championed diversity with their Now Is Her Time campaign that celebrated a wide range of activists and artists tackling a variety of important issues and even included a powerful execution of a breastfeeding mum. We even saw media companies join the cause marketing wave with BBC launching their ‘Change the Game’ campaign to tackle the dismal 4% coverage women’s sport receives.
Adidas Now Is Her Time campaign - Photo by Adidas
2. Moment marketing - events and debate
Brands took advantage of the big cultural moments in women’s sport this year, with more brands than ever looking to ride on the coattails of the record breaking FIFA Women’s World Cup with majority of the notable campaigns of the year being around this event.
Ash Barty and Bartymite by Vegemite - Photo by Vegemite
We saw P&G lap up the debate, or rather chants of ‘USA Equal Pay’ which reverberated around the stands following their win at the World Cup. They jumped on this debate and showed their support by offering up half a million dollars to the players to level the game - gaining far more PR value than the pay packet itself. Staying with soccer, Budweiser who are a sponsor of the premium women’s league in the US, encouraged other companies to get behind US Soccer more than once every 4-years by promoting the available sponsor categories in the National Women’s Soccer League with their Future Official campaign. We saw the female focused dating app, Bumble use USA’s biggest sport calendar moment, the Super Bowl to launch their inspiring 60 second video of Serena Williams taking matters into her own court and we saw Vegemite rebrand their product to Barty-mite after Australian tennis star, Ash Barty became the number one player in the world.
A number of brands leveraged moments around International Women’s Day with Van’s launching their Vanguard initiative to get more girls into skateboarding with a Skate Jam and campaign featuring a number of it’s female riders. Guinness beer also launched their sponsorship of the Women’s Six Nations rugby tournament to mar the occasion too.
3. Emotional story-telling through inspiring Heroines
We saw brands leveraging the powerful traits of inspiring female sportswoman and showcasing them as strong, resilient and ground-breaking athletes to tell the many powerful and emotionally engaging stories in women’s sport. Nike used emotive and big budget, cinematic video to showcase the legends of the game including the world’s best player, Australian Sam Kerr and other groundbreaking women in football including retired player turned BBC commentator Alex Scott to inspire what is possible for the next generation with their Women’s World Cup campaign. A beautiful campaign leveraging the biggest women’s sport event of the year and they weren’t even a sponsor of the tournament - their competitor, Adidas was!
Nike Dream Crazy campaign featuring Serena Williams - Image by Nike
Serena Williams was a top pick for Nike and Bumble in high production, dramatically produced campaigns to tell the story of overcoming hurdles in what felt more like a short movie than an ad. Visa went down the road of creating longer form video content around 6 inspiring football players for their Women’s World Cup sponsorship including Afghan refugee, Nadia Nadimhen who went on to make the Danish national team in what was a moving watch.
4. Music and Anthems with humour
While many brands went down the emotionally charged route, they weren’t the only ones cutting through the clutter with a number of brands tacking the gender inequality in sport in some entertaining executions using music themes as their tool.
While no laughing matter, a number of brands used humour to entertain but also shock on gender equality. BBC partnered up with London Rapper, Ms Banks for the Women’s World Cup producing a gritty but witty music video. Commerzbank used satire around their sponsorship of the German women’s football team taking a stab at the little recognition the two-time World Champs receive in a fun but hard-hitting music themed video. Budweiser went down the same path, changing out key words of Queen Elizabeth’s famous speech during war in 1588 in a video to showcase and support the Lionesses. Even HSBC used music as it’s core idea with their series of brand ads including their Stadium version which aimed to change the face of sport leveraging composer Jean-Michel Jarre.
5. Committed long-term partners and less ‘halo’ brands
While the percentage of sponsor dollars going to women’s sport has been shockingly low at just 0.4%, we are starting to see more investment (albeit slowly) going into the women’s game. What we’re seeing is that those who do commit to women’s sport are going for it, contributing decent budgets and committing to on-going partnerships and campaigns rather than hoping for a quick one-off win. Visa committed the same marketing spend for the Women’s World Cup as they did the men’s and have become football’s biggest supporter following their 7-year deal with UEFA with partnerships across multiple football properties. Brands that got the most attention were the ones who came out with a well-thought out central idea around women’s sport followed by a number of campaigns under it like ‘Dream’ from Nike or Health Insurer, Vitality’s series around the promotion of participation and inclusivity with on-going activity around women’s netball, cricket and football. BBC run a season-long ‘Summer of Women’s Sport’ campaign and Budweiser following suit encouraging fans to get behind both US Soccer and the Lionesses. This trend has resulted in the same brands appearing multiple times in our Top 10 campaigns of 2019 which will be announced shortly.
Summary
It’s been a massive year for women’s sport with records being broken on the screen, in the sports arena and at the negotiation table. We’ve seen marketing budgets and effort follow suit producing some outstanding campaigns, new Heroines but more importantly new dreams and conversation.
There were common themes across many with social cause being at the heart of most campaigns, particularity on topics of gender equality and female empowerment and brands using women’s sport as a platform to change attitudes. They entertained us with satire, music and emotional stories but most importantly they inspired us which at it’s core is what women’s sport marketing is all about. We saw brands being recognised for multiple campaigns showing that there is long-term thinking and investment in the game. It was about sharing the big moments and it was impossible to see past the Women’s World Cup which helped create a new era for women’s sport. Majority of our 2019 Team Heroine campaign winners which will be announced soon centred around this event.
With the Tokyo Olympics and other brands wanting to join the game, there is no sign of activity, talk-ability or opportunity fading and we’re looking forward to seeing how 2020 shapes up.
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