Julie Haddon (NWSL) | Reshaping the Future of Women's Soccer

25:45But I would say along the way, in the past decade or so, I had a boss. You guys all probably know Gary Briggs because he's a legend. And Gary Briggs was probably my first boss that really understood that you don't have to form fit people into what they are. You have to find a place to put them on the field and let them play their best role or their best position. But Gary gave me one piece of advice that I think about all the time. And if it's okay to swear on your show, I'm going to share it. It came about joining eBay from DreamWorks. And I was right out of working on Shrek and Ants and Madagascar and Sinbad and a bunch of CGI feature films, because that's what I did at DreamWorks Animation.

26:27I joined and here was this company that was the early days of the internet. And it was a lot of people that had the path of consulting HBS to Bain or McKinsey and then into early days of tech. And so I came in and the first thing I thought was, oh, I've got to get my PowerPoint game on. I've got to go start acting like I'm a consultant. And Gary wanted me for what I did. And he said, Julie, in my review, he wrote, don't fuck with your swing. And I thought that was a really interesting piece of advice that I often share with younger people when I talk to my team and others. is that, you know, be the best of what you do better than anybody because there's nobody else who does what you do.

27:05So why would I try to become something that I'm not? And I hear that a lot. So I think he was a wonderful mentor as him become a wonderful friend. The other person that I look back on, and it's very pertinent to my job now, is when I was in college, I was part of the softball team, NCAA Division I team at Indiana University. And there was a coach there named Gail Blevins. And I think what Gail taught me about as a coach, in some ways, this is your CEO or your leader when you're in your teens and 20s. And we often learn from our coaches. And she taught me a lot about resilience and discipline and how to get your ass kicked and keep moving on.

27:46And so I really think she's one of the foremost people that influenced me as well, both between work and early formative days. Let's talk more about your CMO and chief commercial officer at the NWSL. Two and a half years in, you're the first person with that job title. So there was no predecessor. So where did you start? It was basically your job to create, I guess, in many ways. So tell us about your onboarding two and a half years ago and how you formed, designed, created the role that you are sitting in right now. Well, the first role was I was the first ever CMO. So I started in August of 2022.

28:27And they just said, bring in this marketer. The board and the commissioner realized we're at the time that we had to start building our brand and thinking about revenue and viewership. So I joined the company. And I remember talking to Jason Nottie at Adweek was saying, you're the first ever CMO. What do you think? And I said, this reminds me a lot about the early days of Twitter because early days of Twitter, there were 875 ,000 users at the time when I was working there. And I knew that this was going to be something that the brands would connect with. And we had one brand was Southwest Airlines and a celebrity was a fine frenzy.

29:02And I had this vision, like, how can we make this a tool that brands will use? And so literally what I did at Twitter was I went from brand to brand, ad agency to ad agency, and I was trying to get them to sign up. It was a bit of a strange role. It was a little bit of like consulting with brands, consulting with sports and celebrities. But at the time, it was really early. And it wasn't until the debates that year with McCain and Obama, where they started integrating Twitter into real-time television. That's how long ago it was. And so I remember talking to Jason Nauti in this interview. And I said to him, you know, I felt like the NWSL was going to have its hockey stick moment like Twitter, because there's oftentimes I'm in things that are very early and people think you're crazy, but I just knew this was something that I wanted to tackle.

29:53So my dream, when I joined the NWSL, I sit in my office, there was nobody else on the team. There were, I don't know, 20 people in the company. And I looked outside and there was a cactus plant, this cactus that just was like old and decrepit and sitting there waiting for it to be thrown away. And I joked with my manager at the time, this is our commissioner. And I said, Jessica, this is my first employee. So that became the joke was I had a cactus was my first employee. And so what came from that was a year of just building and experimenting and trying all the different ways that we grow by telling the stories of our clubs and our players and breaking records and merchandising these wins, if you will.

30:33And really we leaned heavily on social that were the The first two employees I had were social and one person that was a designer from the NFL that came over. And so that was the early days in early 2023. And as the year progressed, we started seeing how the importance of working with brands helps build our brand, right? This ecosystem, if you will, of more brands that know about us and our partners. We had a great suite at the time, early partners with us like Ally and Nationwide and CarMax and Delta. and how do we work with these partners to help build the NWSL brand and add value to the partners that want to be connected with our fan base.

31:10So the more that happened, the more we started realizing that there is this co-marketing connectivity of how we raise the game together. And so by the end of that year, we started seeing that there were some real important intersectionalities between commercial and revenue. And as many of you know, from listening to the show and different people you've interviewed, Jim, marketing and commercial are often at head, sales and revenue are at odds, head to head. And in this case, we wanted to embrace it because, you know, the best marketing people have revenue mindset and the best revenue people understand the complexities of marketing.

31:46And so we decided to put it into one roof. So at the end of 2023, we moved it and we kicked off in 2024 with one unified group and it became marketing and commercial operations that I had the opportunity need to step in and build and lead. And what's really great is I get to talk to CMOs all day long about ways that they want to build their brand. And again, that strategic creativity piece of it is I'll listen to some of their problems and I'll be talking to, you know, one brand is an issue around loyalty and retention. And another brand is having some challenges with differentiation and what their North Star is.

32:22And immediately in these meetings, I'll listen to them and I'll talk to them. And I'm like, ah, so this is what you're solving for. And they're like, oh my God, that's actually our brand guidelines. That's our, you know, that's the strategy work we just landed on. So that's like the most ultimate form of flattery is when we could be solving what the brand needs, as well as helping what we do to grow our fan base. So, you know, it's a long way since the cactus days, but you know, we've got a team. It's, it's gosh, I want to say it's half the company now is, is under the marketing and commercial operations team.

32:52We have now a revenue head. We have a marketing head. Like I said, the worst job in the company is to be the CMO's marketing VP, but we joke about that affectionately. And I think we're off and running. We put licensing and merch together with consumer products in one head, with one group with us as well. Broadcast is in the group because all of these are fan touch points. So, you know, if you're building a great product on the pitch and we're showing it through television and all of the delivery of our game, and then we're turning around and we're able to monetize that with great sponsors and great partners that are part of our ecosystem.

33:26You know, we just welcomed last week, for example, Elf for our beauty partner. And, you know, Corey is an incredible marketing machine. We get the opportunity to work with Corey and her team and the agency, and we're going to build some great stuff together that's going to help benefit reaching our fan base, which is, you know, young early adopter men and women. And I know she's excited about the Gen Z, Gen Alpha, millennial audience that we will bring to her, they're going to come up with really exciting ways to focus on our game and our players.

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35:10So everything looks great from the outside. Everything seems to be clicking and working and you've had a wonderful two and a half years. Is there anything that's not working? Anything you're struggling with? Oh, there's always something you're struggling with. Ask me which day. But I mean, I think probably the biggest thing is that because I'm not a patient person, I think that my brain goes very fast and I process information at a speed that is quick, I will see opportunities and I will want to go for them. And then I realize like we have to be patient. We have to say, all right, just because the NFL could do this or eBay could do this, we're not yet ready to do that, right?

35:49Like we don't have a team of hundreds of people that can go implement this or budgets or resources. So often my biggest struggle might be, if you will, the proverbial, my eyes are bigger than my stomach. And that doesn't stop me from challenging and trying, but every once in a while, that's probably one of the biggest challenges is I have to be patient and I'm, I'm not great at it because, you know, my superhero skill and my kryptonite would be that I probably, you know, see around corners, meaning I will have a really strong sense of intuition on where something's headed and knowing that I might have to take people along with me who don't see that or have different ways of looking at it because their superhero skills are not aligned with what, what, you know, mine is.

36:34And by the way, that's not necessarily a positive. Sometimes it's terrible. Don't go ever see a movie with me, Jim, because I will sit next to you and be that annoying person that says, it's the son that did it, or it's the boyfriend that did this. You know, I'm the annoying person that reads the first page of the book and I'm like, I need to just get to it faster at the end of it. But in fairness, I think that's probably also the biggest challenge. But you know, what's nice about the NWSL is that because we're a culture of, you know, challenger brand DNA and disruption, it's never really frowned upon.

37:03It's also like, oh, that's Julie being Julie, or that's the team being big because we'd rather have aim too high than not aim high enough. With all the opportunities ahead of you, and you're still in the early chapters of this league, and it's so positive and so fun and so inspiring. Where do you personally focus? You've built a team now, You have a lot more people in your organization. You brought commercial together with CMO. So of all the things you could focus on, and there's a lot, when you think about your week, your month ahead, your year ahead, what are the things that you put at the top of the list?

37:36At the top of the list, 100 % it's people. I would say what I was going to do early on in my career. This is funny. My mother still reminds me about this because she worries about that I work too much, like every good Jewish mother does. But she tells me, you're working so hard. What about the time you wanted to be a teacher? Because I think in high school, I told her I was going to be a teacher. I think about one of my passion areas is really developing young talent. What's so exciting about the NWSL, we have a lot of really young people that are in their first or second jobs in their career who want to be part of this because, again, it's a bit of a startup DNA.

38:13We have the challenger brand ethos. So, you know, I really do enjoy working with people who haven't necessarily figured things out yet and helping them get there and helping coach. It's kind of like being a teacher in a way is to help develop the young talent. And I spend my time thinking about that. And I continue to spend my time thinking about how we can be the best league in the world and raising our game, you know, and trying to balance the appetite and the stomach ratio. but I do really like the people side of this. And it's not just the people side inside my team in our league. It's the people side in the clubs because all of our, you know, different clubs, we have 16 now, they're all hiring people.

38:57They're all looking for talent. They're all looking because, you know, to raise their game because all of us together are how this is going to work, right? Like the power of the NWSL at the air and the ground and the fans that go become fans of Angel City or fans of Washington or fans of Chicago, whatever club they're fans of, they're coming in because they love the players. So I do think part of this is also working closely with the clubs and the players themselves. I mean, these young athletes who are, you know, first time ever getting contract deals and endorsements and seeing how important building their brand is and their personal growth.

39:32It's such a treasure to be able to kind of impact it, like I said, at the air and the ground. You have such a learning mindset. You've been in this job since the summer of 2022. How are you, Julie, a different leader now than you were when you walked into this role? I would say I'm probably more hands-off now that I have been in a role where I have to, you know, going from where NFL, where I was leading a team, but very, you know, we had agencies, our ecosystem was much bigger in coming in and realizing that in the beginning, I had to build a lot of this until we got to a place with our team. I'm trying to be a little more like thinking about the future instead of actually doing necessarily writing copy and doing the campaign stuff we did early on when it was just a handful of folks in my cactus.

40:20I want to return to your career path. You studied journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington. You played on the softball team. You then went into Silicon Valley Entertainment, finally sports. Back then when you were a softball playing journalism student and your mom thought you wanted to be a teacher. What were you thinking about back then in terms of what you do when you exit at IU? That's such a great question, Jim, because I literally was just talking to my 17-year-old son about this last night. So he's a junior in high school and he's not sure what he wants to do in that pressure when you're going into SAT time and college time.

40:56And when I think about what I wanted to do back then, I knew kind of the blocks of what it was. I knew that it was going to be something in a space with people and creativity and building things. I knew that it was not going to be a desk job where I don't talk to people or I don't get opportunities, you know, that would be orienting towards, I would say, creativity and entrepreneurship and building. I mean, even when I was at the NFL, one of my favorite parts of this was when Tim joined and the ability to say, we're going to go, you know, get younger fans and take this helmet off strategy and start trying to find new muscles into building.

41:35Tim was the CMO at the time at the NFL, just for listeners. Yeah, thank you, Tim Ellis. And before that, I was hired by Don Hudson, who was the CMO. And both Tim and Don had a real focus on growing our fan base. So there was a real entrepreneurial, exciting part of that job to building a new muscle at the NFL. And so I think about, it was never for me when I was looking into my career saying, I'm going to be a CMO one day. I knew the general skill sets of the things I liked, you know, the flavors I liked and honestly, the flavors of things I didn't like. And I often say that to students when I go around and speak to colleges or even my employees, like getting closer to what it is you want is equally as important as knowing what it is you don't want because you'll find your way there.

42:19It's like sometimes the litmus test of no, no, no gets you closer to the yes. Yeah, for sure. Now, you talked about the NFL a couple of times this interview, which I knew you would do. You were there five plus years. You joined in 2016. Just a remarkable run in every possible way. And it is the ultimate sports league on so many levels. What do you feel now that you're away from it a couple of years? What is the business lesson, the marketing lesson that isn't talked about enough when we talk about the NFL? Wow. Where do we begin? And I could spend an hour talking about the incredible things that are coming out of there.

42:58I think the part that is so apparent is just how connected with culture the NFL is. I mean, it's like bigger than any holiday of the year. And I don't think when I was in it, I saw it because it was just my work, right? And then you step back and I just went through watching the Super Bowl and seeing like the whole roadblock of Monday following, whether it's in traditional media, digital media, social everywhere was what happened at the game or what happened with those advertising spots that came out of it. I mean, we talked actually, right? I mean, it was the last Tampa Super Bowl, Jim, when I was on this podcast last and we were talking about the Lombardi spot that we did.

43:39And that was right in the heels of coming out of the pandemic, right? It was January 21, if I recall, January, February of the last time we did this. And I think the part that is so incredible is how connected to culture in everyday life the NFL has become. And I don't see it when you're there, but when you leave and you see it as a fan, it's just incredibly humbling to think I was lucky enough to be a part of it. Maybe that's an obvious lesson. I don't know, but I do think they're in every conversation. That's what I mean. They're in every conversation, every conversation. You meet someone new in a bar or restaurant street for your spouse, partner, friend.

44:21The NFL comes up in the first five minutes in some way. A hundred percent. And it's so cool. I really think that's so cool to have been part of it. I think it's the biggest enterprise in America, in the world. It's global now. And I I just love watching the growth I'm so proud of. I look at the teams that are playing overseas now, and so many of my friends are still there. And I share on how these wins are happening along the way. And I'm just really proud. I mean, I feel like, again, pinch me that I was part of it because I've learned so much, you know, as I went from one football to the other.

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46:04Now let's flip into the creative brief. Now you love sports, I know that, but you're also a self-professed movie and word nerd. So I'd like to hear the origin story of being a movie and word nerd? I mean, it goes a long way. I've always been somebody that just loves words. I have a funny joke with a couple of my friends who are complete nuts about music, and I will not like any of their music if I don't like the words, right? Even in my taste of reading, I read a lot. I love playing word games. I very much like my favorite wind down is Words with Friends or the Wordle New York times or you know things like that that make me calm down or find hobbies or habits or distractions or entertainment i just love things that involve words but it's also like poetry and how music is that and so i tend to like more about the word part of it than the the noise of the music or the the orchestral or the score or the arrangement or whatever it is if the words suck i'm not into the song.

47:05You lose me at the first minute. So that's a bit of a nerd thing in me. I also really like grammar. My team will talk about this, but it drives me crazy when there's typos and things. Like I'll even be at a restaurant and I'll see that they say Caesar salad with the way A-E interspersed with E-A. And I'm like, no, no, you know, this is spelled wrong or collectible with Able instead of Ible. It just, there's certain things. It's a quirk, But I do really love the construct of, again, how language comes together and words. It's just always been a thing of mine. Is that from your mom, your dad, an early teacher?

47:44What do you think the root of that is? I don't actually have any idea. I think it probably has something to do with some OG of listening to A-tracks with my dad in the car. And it was always some Joni Mitchell, John Denver music or something that had a really good poet, a good songwriter behind it. which got me into the appreciation of it. And then I'd go in my mom's car and it was always some disco or something to do. And I preferred being in my dad's car with the 8-tracks and my mom's with the music, which had words I didn't understand. I mean, you know, a lot of that 80s music, like the words are just nuts.

48:19Yeah. How about movies? What's the origin of that? Oh my God. I mean, I think it had to do with, I was a little filmmaker when I was a kid and always making movies on high eight or super eight, you know, having had the privilege of being part of the sausage making out of DreamWorks and working even early at a division of Blue Sky Studios got bought by Fox. And I just have always gone to movies at festivals and for hobbies. Again, similar. I think it's the art of really getting inspiration and stories. Academy Awards is a national holiday at my house, much like Super Bowl. I see everything. I do the ballots.

48:53I just love, love the sitting in a theater. And again, just like sports, what's kind of fun about these businesses is that you're connected by something. So being at a movie at the Park City Egyptian Theater at midnight and seeing during Sundance, I don't know, it was one movie I think was called 21 Hotel Rooms. I'll remember seeing this. It was a late night movie. Went by myself, sitting next to somebody. And by the end, we were talking about the movie and sharing our Twizzlers. We were just having the best time because we were both really engrossed on where a story takes you. And it's such a singular moment.

49:28You watch a show or you watch movie. It's just a journey you have with that experience. And you have to find other people to talk about it with because you're not necessarily talking in a big movie theater with 300 other people. So that's what's fun. I'm hooked on severance these days. You probably are too. If you love words and you love movies, it's crazy. Oh, my favorite show lately is I'm loving White Lotus. I think Mike White is a genius. Yes, he is a genius. I need to meet him one day. He's like, when he did the show and it was about corporate America, it was such a really interesting kind of spin on a struggle of this woman going through what was like a bit of an office space meets quirky, tragic comedy.

50:10It was called Enlightened, I think was the name of it. But Mike White is just such a genius. I think one of the best shows out there. Oh, my God. His perception about people, his understanding of humanity, his understanding of relationships, his understanding of story. It's just the character development. I mean, you spend like the first episode and now we're, I think on episode three, maybe. And I am just so taken by how he can develop characters and you know them. You like, it's almost like, I wonder what goes on in his mind. Now that's a guy, that's a guy. What's the first brand you remember making an impact on you as a young girl?

50:44Oh my goodness. You know what? It's probably like embarrassing to admit this one, but I loved Sony. I thought the fact that like the Walkman came out and the cool way it was like delivering music to us, I thought they were so innovative. And I love that. And then I also I used to collect wacky packs. So I always kind of loved brands as a young kid, too, and found, you know, spoofs on them. Hilarious. But I also thought the Pepsi was a really interesting brand growing up. I remember watching them as their as their product evolved, as their flavors evolved and as their packaging evolved and as their cultural connectivity evolved.

51:21But I think those categories of things were really impactful to me. And especially given how much media they spent back in the day. And we talked about being such a part of pop culture. They kind of wrote the book on that. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things I loved about being able to work with Dawn Hudson, too, given she was a legend in building Pepsi and her experience there and becoming friends with some of the folks that we got to work with at the NFL. And even now, we talk quite a bit with different brands. So I always think about what, you know, the years of the pressure to constantly evolve and innovate along the way that they have brought with them.

51:59Who's been the most inspiring person in your life? My dad, hands down. My dad, he passed away from COVID in 2021. And what I loved about my dad, he played up until he was 79 years old. He played and started playing in five softball leagues. But he, by the time he was in his late 70s, he was only able to play three. and he had moved from shortstop to catcher. So they would pinch run him. He had lost his talent, shall we say, as the age went on, but he still played in leagues with 25 year olds and people that were like a third his age. And he was a practicing attorney and he was a phenomenal supporter of me.

52:37And when I was a kid and I wanted to play little league, when girls didn't play little league or girls didn't play baseball, we had to get relegated to play softball. Instead, Instead, he was always telling me, basically, go for it. Just go for your dreams and never kind of talked me out of things and always would try to find the way to connect me to what I loved. And I'd say for sure he was the biggest influence. And I know that probably sounds cliche to reference a parent, but incredibly supportive. And I would say in everything I did when I went left, when everybody else would go right, he was always there.

53:12What was his counsel to you when you played at IU in softball? I'm sure he saw many games. Oh, he used to bitch at me. I have a moment that I remember specifically. We used to joke for many years, he just called Hinsdale because it was actually in high school. And we were on our way to like a state tournament. And the bases were loaded and we were up by 12. And he always used to tell me I should never be the kind of person that tries to get a home run, just deliver the singles and get the people to score, which is probably why I have the, you know, very strong team player ethos. But he was coaching at the time.

53:47He was on third base and I was stepping into the plate. And because it was the sixth inning and we were going to win by a mercy rule anyway, he looked down at me and I was walking into the plate in the fence. It was really not that far. It looked very attainable. And he told me you should never go for that. You would be, you know, a selfish player. But he looked at me and he gave me this kind of like nod. And as I stepped in the batter's box, that meant like, let's effing go. and I just banged it. And I remember seeing the joy as I ran around for a space and I saw him jumping up and down because I cleared the fence and made a grand slam with bases loaded.

54:22And, you know, whatever. It was a non-consequential extra four wins, but it was that moment of just feeling it and knowing that like I had the liberty and the freedom to just crush it and go with the full support. Don't fuck with their swing, right? Came back to that. Absolutely, absolutely. Go for it. I did not. It was a pretty good one, Jim, I have to say. It was probably clear at 300 feet. Oh, wow. Julie, that's a good place to end it. Really beautiful story. Thank you for this. What a gift in every possible way. And so nice to connect with you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be at the San Diego Wave home opener if you're out there.

54:55All right. Let's go. We're going to open our season this weekend. We've got an ABC game on Saturday. The Kansas City Curtain are playing Portland Thorns. I wouldn't be a good CMO, CRO if I didn't give a good plug here. But I mean, I think we're really excited for the season ahead. And it's an absolute pleasure to be here with you. Thank you. That was my conversation with Julie Haddon. And it was a great one. Three takeaways from this one for your business brand and life. And we have to start with this one. Don't fuck with your swing. What a great thought. Julie talked about a boss years ago who told her, be comfortable with what you're great at, leverage it, understand your strengths, and don't change with the wind.

55:34Don't fuck with your swing. Second takeaway, Julie is a learn-it-all versus a know-it-all leader. And you heard that come to life in many different stories in this show. And I love how she keeps a notebook for reflections, ideas. And frankly, if she wasn't carrying a notebook and making time for thought and learning, she wouldn't have landed at this job at the NWSL because of the note she made when she was at a soccer match in France several years ago. So third takeaway, when I asked Julie what she's focused on right now with all the opportunities ahead of them, she quickly said, the people, focus on the people.

56:09We hear that a lot in the show, but we have to keep reinforcing it. That's our role as a leader. And Julie does that brilliantly, not just her team, but the people who work in all the franchises, the players and the fans. Focus on the people.

56:26That's it for this episode of the CMO Podcast. If you found this helpful and entertaining, I would be so grateful if you could share our show with your friends. And I would be super happy if you subscribe so you can be updated as we publish new episodes. And if you really want to help, leave us a five-star rating and a positive review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. The CMO Podcast is a Vive original production. Episodes of the CMO Podcast are produced by Vive. The views and opinions expressed by podcast speakers and guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of our sponsors or its personnel, nor do our sponsors advocate or endorse any individuals or entities featured on the episodes.