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A Blueprint for Creating Equitable Communities

Colle McVoy

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The urgency to create equitable communities where all people thrive continues, but most solutions have been slow to bring change. Especially in Minneapolis, which has one of the largest racial wealth gaps in the nation. But a pioneering movement in the city is building a vibrant community that supports business development, celebrates culture and nurtures belonging so Black people can thrive. Hear how this unique approach, fueled by creative, corporate and civic partners, is expected to transform Minneapolis’ reputation while providing a powerful blueprint for change across the country.

The Future of Deaf Representation in Entertainment 

National Research Group

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The popularity of the film “CODA” sparked a new conversation about representation of the Deaf community in entertainment – authenticity on screen, inclusivity among writers, producers, and actors, and accessibility within the industry at large. Deaf West Theatre, the most prominent nonprofit organization focusing on Deaf-centered storytelling, has partnered with National Research Group, a global insights and strategy firm, to find out how those in the Deaf community really feel about the current state of representation and accessibility in entertainment. This session will highlight findings from an in-depth research study; feature video from a roundtable of prominent Deaf actors, directors, writers, and more; and provide insights on how to move forward to build a more inclusive industry.

Snoop, Martha, and the New Blend of Wine Consumers 

Observatory

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Wine has a reputation for needing a mature palate to fully appreciate. But why, with older millennials turning 40, is wine’s popularity continuing to decline? How does the wine industry compete with spirits, craft beer and hard seltzers to reach a diverse and younger (over 21) audience? By partnering with pop culture icons Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart and leaning into trendier blends, 19 Crimes has reinvented the wine industry’s appeal to younger consumers. Snoop’s Cali Red achieved the number one single selling wine in pacesetter history and is bringing new consumers at an unparalleled rate. Join 19 Crimes, Observatory, and Snoop Dogg’s agent, Nick Adler, as they discuss how to attract new consumers despite radically changing consumers attitudes toward alcohol preferences.

Chief Digital Officers Transforming Health Care

YML

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Chief Digital Officers are responsible for increasing their team’s speed and agility, making an impact quickly, and shipping products more frequently. Does any of that scream health care to you? Well — maybe not historically, but this new crop of CDOs are changing the game. Hear from Rita Khan, CDO at Mayo Clinic, Prat Vemana, CDO at Kaiser Permanente, and Chris Waugh, Chief Innovation Officer at Sutter Health — all of whom are building the digital health experiences of more than 25M Americans. Interviewed by Ashish Toshniwal, Founder and CEO at YML, hear how these CDOs are shaping the future of patient-first experiences using cutting edge technology, design and product strategy.

72andSunny

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We’re in the midst of a ‘movement moment,’ a period of rapid change punctuated by incredible hardships and economic, social and political instability. All of this can take a serious toll on employee well-being and presents organizations with a host of challenges that have no easy solution. Join agency EDI Leaders as they discuss how they’ve responded to the crises we all face and how they’ve found ways to support employees through these polarizing times.

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The standard for professionalism has been dictated by a singular perspective for decades, so it’s no surprise that agencies and brands alike are struggling to evolve the corporate culture to suit a more diverse, inclusive workforce. Join us as we discuss where companies are falling short on their DEI promises and how we can rebuild the workplace of the future.

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NEW YORK, (August 16, 2022) – Stagwell’s (NASDAQ: STGW) PRophet, the first-ever AI-driven PR pitch platform built by and for PR professionals that predicts media interest and sentiment before you pitch, today announced the hiring of Charlie Tulip as Enterprise Account Executive and Kendra Lewellyn as the company’s Digital Marketing Manager, both moves that seek to further meet customer demand for the  growing AI platform.

Tulip, PRophet’s latest addition to its sales team, brings over 20 years of B2B sales experience. No stranger to the technology space, Tulip has worked with a number of hugely successful, high growth software startups, and will bring his expertise to increase PRophet’s growing number of enterprise customers.

“A rising number of PR execs are seeing and realizing the value AI can bring to a media relations team’s productivity and performance,” said Andrew Meranus, EVP of Sales for PRophet. “Charlie’s addition comes at a perfect time of growth for the PRophet team and of the customers we serve, and I couldn’t be more excited about the future he’ll help us achieve with new enterprise accounts.”

Lewellyn, who comes to PRophet with a decade of digital marketing and design experience, will drive the the company’s global marketing strategy across all of its digital platforms, including LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, SEM, SEO and email campaigns. Additionally, Lewellyn will be a key player in boosting subscriptions to PRophet’s innovative software via its monthly ‘pay-as-you-go’ subscription offering, which makes the platform easily accessible to PR professionals while avoiding long-term payment commitments. Lewellyn joins PRophet after five years as the Digital Marketing Manager at software solutions company Pedigree Technologies. In that role, she led on digital marketing strategy and designed, managed, and maintained the company’s websites, blog SEO/SEM, and PPC advertising programs, while also advancing the company’s social media presence.

“Kendra will be key to driving demand for our monthly users, ultimately landing and expanding them into enterprise customers,” said Aaron Kwittken, PRophet founder and CEO. “Her content creation, digital marketing, design and PR experience make her a perfect for for this role. We’re thrilled to welcome Kendra to our team and eager to collaborate with her.”

In addition, PRophet has hired its first Business Development Representative, Ian Brand. Brand will support PRophet’s overall sales efforts and will advise on business strategy and planning. Before joining PRophet, Brand served as an account manager at Insight Media Labs (IML), a company specializing in digital advertising for local television stations and agencies.

Both agency and brand representatives interested in learning how PRophet can dramatically improve performance of their media relations efforts, can contact PRophet at sales@prprophet.ai to learn about subscription options and to request a demo. For more information on PRophet, visit www.prprophet.ai.

About PRophet

PRophet is the first-ever A.I.-driven data-as-a-service (DaaS) platform designed by and for the PR community that samples past stories to better predict future media interest, sentiment, and spread through natural language processing and machine learning. PRophet is a product within the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, a proprietary suite of SaaS and DaaS tools built for the in-house marketer, spanning campaign ideation to activation and analysis. PRophet is owned by Stagwell, and was founded by marketing industry thought leader and entrepreneur Aaron Kwittken alongside former political strategist, technologist, and author Mark Penn, Chairman and CEO of Stagwell. To learn more, visit prprophet.ai.

About Stagwell

Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

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Media Contact

Adam Wise

KWT Global

awise@kwtglobal.com

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Stagwell Celebrates a Successful Year Post-Merger Driven by Digital Services, Top Talent, Strategic Investments and Global Expansion

NEW YORK, 08/02/2022  — One year ago today, Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW) launched as the challenger network built to transform marketing. Led by longtime pollster, political strategist, businessman, and author Mark Penn, who serves as chairman and CEO, Stagwell has grown exponentially in the last year, outpacing global advertising giants in full-year 2021 performance.

“On Stagwell’s first birthday, I can point to a year of spectacular results and incredible collaboration,” said Stagwell Chairman and CEO Mark Penn. “Our combination of talent and technology is working. Thanks to our clients, talent, and partners who share in this philosophy, we’ve had a great first year, and we’re ideally poised for another year of transformative work. We can’t wait for year two.”

A key component of Stagwell’s first year has been focusing on a high-growth mix of digital services that align the company to the fastest-growing segments of the digital marketing economy, including digital transformation, global performance media, connected commerce, augmented reality, and more. Fifty-six percent of Stagwell’s revenue by the end of Q1 2022 came from digital capabilities. As outlined in Stagwell’s 2022 Annual Report, four pillars are driving the network’s performance: 

• Strategic M&A is fundamentally growing Stagwell’s portfolio to evolve alongside the fastest growing segments of the new economy. To date, acquisitions include digital brand and experience innovation company Instrument; London-based media agency Goodstuff; Warsaw-based e-commerce solutions provider Brand New Galaxy; and Kyiv-based omnichannel content production company PEP Group, which joined Locaria, Stagwell’s multilingual content agency.
• SaaS and DaaS product development investments are providing new revenue from organizations doubling down on in-house marketing – once seen as a threat to global marketing networks. The Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC) arms the in-house marketer with tools that assist campaigns from ideation to activation. To date, these tools include solutions spanning augmented reality, influencer marketing, artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted press outreach, and more. The SMC’s first acquisition, Apollo Program, an AI-powered SaaS platform for uncovering consumer, creative and contextual insights, further enhances Stagwell’s first-party data infrastructure.
• The Global Affiliate Network of over 50 partners is enabling Stagwell to capture footprint across key growth regions. With agencies in the UK, EMEA, APAC, and LATAM complementing existing media and scaled content capabilities, Stagwell has been able to deliver the full spectrum of marketing services to global brands and capture business from legacy giants regardless of region. 
• Integrated Services and cross-network collaboration are fueling more “transformative” $10M+ assignments, including Stagwell global performance agency Assembly’s win of Lenovo’s North American, EMEA, and Latin America media AOR.

Join Stagwell in celebrating its first birthday by visiting the company’s LinkedIn. 

About Stagwell

Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 12,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

Contact: 
Beth Sidhu
pr@stagwellglobal.com

SOURCE Stagwell Inc.

Originally released on

CONTACT

Beth Sidhu
pr@stagwellglobal.com
202-423-4414

New Partnership Gives Harris Poll Clients Access to PRophet’s AI-Driven PR Software to Inform Survey Design and Maximize Press Coverage of Research Results

NEW YORK – June 15, 2022 – PRophet, the first-ever AI-driven PR pitch platform built by and for PR professionals that predicts media interest and sentiment, today announced a partnership with leading global market research and consulting firm, The Harris Poll, that will maximize results for Harris clients and provide access to PRophet’s innovative platform. Both firms sit within Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network built to transform marketing.

Through this partnership, Harris Poll clients will receive access to the innovative PRophet software platform to test the “mediability” of their research before conducting survey field work, to confirm the data they seek will in fact be of interest to journalists. Upon survey completion, Harris clients can then use PRophet’s machine learning and natural language processing technology to test the news angle of their poll to identify the journalists most likely to cover their story and predict how positively they’d write about the results.

“For nearly two years, PRophet’s focus has remained exclusively on improving the earned media performance of PR professionals. We do this by making teams smarter and more performative, slashing countless hours that brands and agency teams spend on mindless tasks such as media list building and patchwork PR pitch guessing games,” said Aaron Kwittken, founder and CEO, PRophet. “We are thrilled to now bring our predictive technology to support the construction and execution of the critical research completed by those same brands and agencies in conjunction with the highly acclaimed, global research leader, The Harris Poll.”

Clients of The Harris Poll will receive and maintain access to the PRophet platform through completion of the marketing efforts around the poll’s results.  Clients will then have the option to extend their access to the platform via PRophet’s monthly pay-as-you-go subscription or through an enterprise subscription available to brands and agencies.

“PRophet is a first-class PR performance platform that will help our clients optimize the design of their thought leadership surveys and improve internal media strategies that lead to even greater performance of their PR campaigns,” said Erica Parker, Managing Director of the Media Communications Research Practice at The Harris Poll. “Journalist interest will always be an essential part of every thought leadership project, as it bridges the critical gap between content owner and visibility among critical stakeholders, including the public. Our partnership with PRophet will lead to even more compelling surveys for our clients while helping them perfect their media outreach.”

PRophet is part of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, a suite of technology products that support in-house marketing transformation for modern businesses. To learn more about PRophet, please visit www.prprophet.ai or email sales@prprophet.ai to schedule a demo. Learn how Harris’ Media Communications Research Practice can help you own and tell your story in our constantly evolving media landscape at theharrispoll.com/solutions/harris-custom-research. For more information on the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, reach out to hello@stagwellglobal.com.

About PRophet

PRophet is the first-ever A.I.-driven data-as-a-service (DaaS) platform designed by and for the PR community. The platform helps earned media professionals use data to land more media placements by analyzing past stories to predict future media interest and sentiment using natural language processing and machine learning. Founded by PR and marketing industry thought leader and entrepreneur Aaron Kwittken, and launched in 2020, PRophet is part the Stagwell Marketing Cloud. It’s available to agencies, brands and individuals through an enterprise license or a monthly pay-as-you-go plan. To learn more, visit prprophet.ai.

About The Harris Poll

The Harris Poll is one of the longest-running surveys in the U.S., tracking public opinion, motivations, and social sentiment since 1963. The Media Communications Research Practice supports the full scope of clients’ data-driven communications strategy, including paid, earned, social and owned media. Whether the goal is to own and tell their own story through thought leadership research, to measure what the public thinks or knows through public opinion polling, or to influence the policy and legislative agenda by taking a public affairs lens, our consultants guide the research and analysis process, from discovering a unique space a client can own through supporting the full range of outreach activities.

About Stagwell Inc.
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 12,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

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By

Barbara Laidlaw
Partner, Global Risk, Reputation + Public Affairs
Allison+Partners

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When an organization begins to expand globally, it often faces a new set of challenges that could mean adjusting current strategies that have yielded success on the domestic front. Economic, regulatory and operational factors are just some of the many considerations nascent global businesses must address to succeed on the international stage.

A less tangible but imperative concern is the organization’s reputation and how it will scale along with other elements of the business. Reputation takes years to build and only minutes to tarnish, making it one of the most precarious factors at play during expansion. Therefore, before pursuing an ambitious global footprint, businesses should consider how reputation management coexists with the following:

• Cultural & regional differences: Global expansion will require the ability to adjust some aspects of how a business operates to meet the standard of wherever the expansion takes place. Consider how different factors, such as language barriers, lifestyle, cultural history, education and politics, impact business objectives from employees’ and customers’ perspectives. By developing a strong understanding of these components and how they may factor into the business’s reputation, an organization will be positioned well to avoid pitfalls and preempt potential damage from related issues.
• Regulatory & political issues: Establishing an intimate understanding of how relevant political issues may affect the business is critical to avoid becoming trapped in them. Tapping into the expertise of third-party consultants and internal personnel within the region are just two ways a company can ensure it operates with the correct understanding of the political landscape. Strict regulatory compliance is another area in which businesses should invest resources to insulate themselves from running afoul of regulations or laws they may not have considered otherwise.
• Social impact & ESG: As organizations expand globally, they will inevitably increase their global footprint and their environmental and societal one. Depending on the nature of the business, there could be additional social considerations to account for, such as human rights or political turmoil. Today, enterprises prioritize their societal impact more than ever. To continue to thrive, global organizations must navigate the complexities that come with the recent rise in investor and consumer activism.
• Core values: As is true with any period of growth within an organization, maintaining core values is one of the most prominent challenges a business must contend with. This is only magnified when the company begins to expand globally. Upholding core values is essential to brand reputation and should be a priority item when considering further expansion. Emphasizing the importance of quality onboarding procedures, internal initiatives and other team-focused programs are ways a business can maintain its values as it grows.
• Communications infrastructure: Ultimately, scaling communications capacity and capabilities to match company growth will provide a business with the fundamental infrastructure it needs to preempt potentially damaging issues and effectively react to them when they occur. Through regular assessments of an organization’s communications capabilities, the business can proactively address weak spots and build on areas of strength, resulting in a more robust global communications program that underpins every core function of the business itself.

Navigating the reputational complexities of a global business is a challenge. While organizations should always remain prepared to tackle known sources of risk to their reputation, there will always be unpredictable events or incidents that present additional risks. Environmental disasters, wars, political turmoil, supply chain challenges and regulatory issues are just some of the many hurdles businesses need to contend with and overcome regularly.

Ultimately, the most effective way to mitigate the potential fallout from known and unknown risks is to continually ensure the organization is operationally resilient and maintains a robust communications infrastructure that it can leverage before, during and after an adverse event.

Barbara Laidlaw brings 25 years of experience developing and running programs that help companies prepare, protect and defend their brand reputations through global and national events, recalls, litigation, data breaches, regulatory issues and labor disputes.

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Stagwell Insights

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Today’s businesses have more reputational capital than ever before. When reputation is managed, it has the potential to add business value and mitigate risks. Stagwell annually produces the Reputation Quotient, the industry’s leading barometer of American corporate reputation, in partnership with Axios and The Harris Poll to uncover insights which brands are gaining or losing reputational capital – and the expectations of a new generation of reputation-minded consumers.  

The Axios Harris Poll 100 is a trusted ranking of the reputations of the companies most on the minds of Americans using a framework Harris has used since 1999. Download the 22nd Annual Reputation Quotient Study report to view the full rankings and gain additional insights about performance year over year. 

Register to receive our 2022 research – set to release in late May – using this form. Reach out to hello@stagwellglobal.com if you have questions. 

Methodology:  

The Axios Harris Poll 100 is based on a survey of 42,935 Americans in a nationally representative sample. The two-step process starts fresh each year by surveying the public’s top-of-mind awareness of companies that either excel or falter in society. These 100 “most visible companies” are then rated by a second group of Americans across the seven key dimensions of reputation to determine the ranking. If a company is not on the list, it did not reach a critical level of visibility to be measured. 

By

Ray Day
Stagwell Vice-Chair 

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“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffet 

Today, corporate reputation means more than mastery of the marketplace. Reputation is a measure of what all stakeholders – including consumers, employees, shareholders, and more – think about a company.  

Contrary to “brand” – which measures a company’s products & services, typically among specific consumer segments, a reputation is earned not created.  

Reputation is comprised of your company’s performance + its behavior in the marketplace, reflected through its internal and external marketing communications. When reputation is curated, it has the potential to build business value and can help mitigate risks. Companies with excellent reputations are more likely to garner positive outcomes, such as advocacy, community expansion and purchase intent.

Today’s corporations and CEOs have greater permission from the public to address complex social issues – within bounds. Reputation today is evolving today to reflect more than just a product or service set, but a businesses’ commitment to serve society.  

In recent years, geopolitical, economic, and social developments have created a society in transition and turmoil. Consumers have more expectations of corporations in this environment – not least because of declining trust and expectations in institutional actors such as governments and municipalities. As measured by Stagwell’s 2021 Reputation Quotient, brands across nearly every business sector experienced a reputational boost during the height of the pandemic as consumers looked to the private sector for solutions where public officials were failing to create them:  

CEOs, and in a limited capacity other star of the C-Suite such as CMOs, are rapidly gaining reputational capital within the market and with consumers. They influence sales, perceived product/service quality, and signal the strength of an organization’s culture. As CEO reputation extends outward, when to exert influence in society becomes more calculated and more important. Americans say CEOs most affect reputation, ethics, and financial success for today’s organizations. CEOs also have a growing public awareness and influence on consumer sales; half of Americans report changing buying habits due to the actions of a CEO. 

More traditional C-suite players like Jamie Dimon at Goldman Sachs leverage influence in quieter, more sustained ways – Dimon’s annual letter is a bellwether for the future of global financial markets, with wide-ranging through leadership implications for businesses within and beyond the financial services category.  

With that reputational capital comes the burden of leadership: the public believes CEOs should stand on issues where they have credibility, not where they don’t have a voice or authority. Ultimately, core values should be the navigator of social issues. Alienation is a risk in a highly polarized society, but so too is the risk of stakeholders who perceive CEOs as indifferent or in conflict with the company’s principles. This is especially true among younger and Black Americans. While standing down is expedient, a generational and cultural divide is growing that will make decisions more difficult and polarizing.  

Corporate and CEO reputation is changing quickly. Stagwell is a leader in global reputation tracking and management; learn more about the Reputation Quotient, an annual collaboration between Stagwell, Axios, and The Harris Poll tracking the most visible companies in America. Register to receive our 2022 research when it releases in May.

CONTACT

Mark Penn

FEATURING

Welcome to the second edition of Hitting the Mark – a monthly analysis of developments at the intersection of business, marketing, and politics meant for the modern C-Suite. This month’s topic? Inflation. 

Inflation is in many ways the most pernicious of economic problems because it affects so many people at the same time. Inflation is at its highest rate since the early 1980s, and, as I wrote recently in the New York Times, “Many Americans under 60 have relatively little experience with anything but comparatively low fuel costs, negligible interest rates, and stable prices. Virtually overnight these assumptions have been shaken.” Consumers are already changing their behavior, becoming more cautious and pessimistic about the state of the economy. All of those COVID savings are being eaten up through the mystery of runaway higher prices.

Most marketers have some real choices in how to respond to inflation and the goal is to be on the side of the consumer during these more difficult economic times.

Of course, the easiest solution is simply to raise prices. It’s no longer 10 cents for a pack of gum; one bellwether of higher prices is the cost of treats like chocolate and spearmint. In 1974 a pack of 7 sticks of gum cost 15 cents. That probably does not even cover the sales tax on a package of gum today. Chocolate is a luxury and luxuries have the most elastic pricing, so they generally have the most room to simply pass on cost increases, so don’t expect to pay the same at the Godiva store.

Other companies have tried hard to conceal price increases by simply reducing the quantity. Cereal companies are famous during inflationary times for simply taking an ounce or two out of those cereal boxes. Consumers can easily miss this shrinkage but go too far and expect a backlash.

Perhaps the best way to get on the side of consumers during this time is to offer bigger units at lower prices. This is why Sam’s Club and Costco generally do better during these times, as their business model is all about delivering more value for less.

Inflation is of course great for products that are perceived as keeping pace with inflation. No product is known for holding its value more than gold – expect the airwaves to be filled with ads that sell gold as the one true hedge against rising prices.

Fast food prices and their consumers are super sensitive to inflation. As the McDonald’s dollar menu inches up from $1, to $2, to $2, its competitors have done a great job advertising $5 fill-up boxes that are brimming with food. These “inflation busters” become the perfect partners to penny-pinched consumers. While prices for organic groceries soar, families know they can rely on these restaurants to remain affordable.

What does this mean for marketing? 

Growth slows during inflationary times, so marketing will also be more about fighting for market share than selling new products to first-time consumers. This means that effective competitive marketing will be a lot more useful for brands. Especially when consumers are motivated by cost-saving, nothing can be quite as powerful as reminding them of the superior value of your business versus competitors.

It’s important to remember that value is not always the same as cost. I once ran advertising on behalf of Microsoft against Linux. Linux was difficult to compete against because the company was giving away some of its software for free. We created the concept of the “total cost of ownership” and showed that the free offering, over time, would be more costly than paying Microsoft. This campaign labeled “Get the Facts” was a huge success.

Focus is important during inflationary times. The consumer is once again king, and behaving somewhat like a taxpayer, skeptical of companies who are focused on giving their money away for causes because they feel like they are being called upon to finance these programs out of pocket when they buy goods and services. Companies with a heavy focus on social programs should evaluate whether they will now be seen as out of step with the needs of consumers. While helping soup kitchens might still be a popular idea during inflationary times, funding the opera might raise eyebrows, and throwing a huge fashion show might alienate consumers at this time.

Now is the time to stop simply watching inflation worsen and pick the right strategy for your company, whether it is reducing package sizes, creating affordable bundles, raising costs, or digging into competitive advertising to fight for market share. As for me? I have to go load some gold bars into my car…

Up next in our Hitting the Mark column? The pandemic, inflation, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, political crises – all these issues raise the importance (and trickiness) of “brand leadership” in our modern era. As we noted in Stagwell’s 2021 research on brand reputation, those perceived as delivering solutions to the pandemic received a major reputational boost over the past few years. Today, a majority of voters are not confident in either the Biden administration (55%) or the Federal Reserve’s (56%) ability to fight inflation. Brands won’t deliver the silver bullet to America’s inflation woes but adapting strategy to give consumers a lifeline amid economic stress can go a long way towards building reputational capital.

Stagwell’s 2022 Reputation Quotient, our annual ranking of the 100 most visible companies in America, is set to release in late May. I look forward to sharing an updated picture of the state of corporate reputation and brand leadership then.

Mark Penn 

By

Jen Wood
SVP, Integrated Marketing
Allison+Partners

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When NIL legislation became law in July 2021, it opened the floodgates for college athletes to partner with companies and monetize their success. Historically, NIL opportunities were talked about in terms of appearances and autographs. But unsurprisingly, the bulk of all NIL deals to date have leaned on the success of digital solutions from social media posts and content to NFT creation.

The first nine months of this marketplace have seen a flurry of activity, but have also exposed a few opportunity areas:

• Despite NIL legislation being touted as benefitting all college athletes, recent data from the platform Opendorse shows 51.1% of all NIL compensation has gone to college football players and 72.6% of all compensation has gone to male athletes.
• Many experts say this imbalance is a result of systemic inequities that exist in sports. Brands could help correct this imbalance by purposefully crafting NIL programs that highlight a diverse representation of athletes across both men’s and women’s sports.
• Even though there’s a desire from all stakeholders to have uniform NIL standards, there’s currently no governing body overseeing this. Depending on your industry, it’s still a bit of the Wild West in terms of who you can partner with. Rules differ by college and conference, leading some conferences to allow NIL partnerships with alcohol and sports betting companies, for instance, while other conferences and schools do not.
• Brands must do their due diligence before approaching an athlete and hire an agency, especially if they’re in a highly regulated industry, to help navigate the constantly changing landscape and make recommendations around the athletes who can help achieve their goals.
• There is great variability in the savviness and experience of those negotiating these deals, with some athletes represented by traditional agents and other athletes left to negotiate on their own. Some universities, such as Ohio State’s NIL Edge Team, have formed expressly to help athletes navigate this void. This creates inconsistencies in how services are priced and opens the door for certain athletes to be taken advantage of.

Partnering with a college athlete, as with any influencer, comes with risk. Not only are proper vetting and contract structure essential to a successful partnership, but athlete deals have more visibility than traditional influencer relationships. This heightens the opportunity for brands to be called out for unfair practices. Using tools, such as A+P’s Influencer Impact Score, helps provide consistent vetting and pricing guidance to ensure each deal is approached equitably.

One thing is for certain – the NIL marketplace’s size and influence will continue to grow. And athlete brand-building efforts will continue to be a huge focus, taking an even larger role in recruitment efforts. Not only will colleges seek to recruit college athletes who are already influencers and can bring that follower base to their school, but they’ll also look to market their institutions’ ability to help athletes build their personal brand by playing at the university. Expect athletes across all college sports to become savvier about their marketing potential and create an exponentially larger industry marketplace.

Jen Wood is senior vice president of Integrated Marketing at Allison+Partners. She’s spent the past 10-plus years of her career in Sports Marketing and Sponsorships overseeing all aspects of her clients sports marketing efforts – from sponsorship strategy development and partner identification, to negotiating multi-million-dollar sponsorship deals with collegiate and professional sports organizations and athletes, partnership activation, and ultimately measuring asset utilization and performance. She’s passionate about the opportunities sports marketing provides and is always ready to chat with an interested brand.