How to Win as a Challenger Brand, with Andrew LeRay, Director of Brand Marketing at NWSL

0:00What if the fastest way to grow a 150-year-old sports league playbook was thrown out completely? Welcome back to another episode of Flashback Friday, where we pull an episode from the archive that hits just as hard today as it did the first time. This week, we're revisiting my conversation with Andrew LeRay, Director of Brand Marketing at the National Women's Sports League. Recorded right as the league was riding the wave of momentum. new sponsors, Rising Stars, a partnership with Alec Cooper's Unwell that put the National Sports League in front of a whole new audience. We get into what it actually means to build a brand for a product that you can't put on the shelf, why player personalities matter more than logos, and the marketing hill Andrew will die on.

0:46If you care about brand building, growth marketing, or sports marketing, this one's worth the replay. Let's dive into it. Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. What is up, Andrew? Welcome to the podcast today. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. The National Women's Soccer League is going through some crazy things and you're running the brand. You just did a huge partnership with Unwell.

1:36I want to start first, what does brand actually mean to you before we go into what you're doing with brand, how you're getting the brand out there? Yeah, to me it's how we want to be perceived by others. I mean, I think we have a vision of what we want the league to become. But it's not enough to just tell people to think one way or another about the league. So showing who we are through our messaging and how we're showing up, the type of partners that we have, showing the incredible athletes that we have in this league, all kind of ladders into the message that we want to be sending. And that in turn then defines our brand.

2:15So it's really trying to develop a perception of the league. yeah and what is the difference of like trying to do it for a league because this is a a movement in an actual product like because your product but i know the league is a product but you're trying to create a new fan base trying to get people knowing the league exists so what how how do you go out and do it for something like a huge league like the national women's soccer league yeah it the business is so diversified and there are so many different aspects to the product right I think it's different from a consumer product industry, so to speak, where you create something and then you have to get people to buy it.

2:54And it's pretty clear that you're driven by the number of sales and how often is this product showing up in the shelves and how quickly is it flying off shelves, whereas ours is far more intangible. So our product is soccer and it is the game itself. And, you know, customers or fans can be those who buy tickets, can be those who buy jerseys, can be those who watch games on TV. folks who follow us on social media. So there's so many different parts of the business, but brand encompasses all of it. So it's, it's how, how people are learning about us, how many people are learning about us and what are they learning about us?

3:31Right. I think we're still sort of in this position where we've experienced this tremendous growth over the past few years and we're on a trajectory that is really exciting. And I think accelerating faster than many other sports leagues and women's sport in general is sort of experiencing this right now, but still have a wide delta in terms of the number of people who very easily can recognize the acronym nwsl and know what it means and those who are still raising an eyebrow and saying well what is nwsl and i mean our goal and mine specifically as director of brand marketing here is to close that gap and to ensure that the most people possible when they hear the letters nwsl they immediately know what that means, what that represents, who our players are and why this league is worth their time, worth their energy, worth their money, worth their effort.

4:23And it's a difficult, it's a difficult self, not just for this league, but for anybody these days, there's never been more things to do. There's never been more touch points for people to, to spend their time. There's a tremendous amount of content out there. There's so many different sports leagues and it's all at our fingertips. So breaking through that noise and creating a value proposition that's unique for our current fans, but also for new fans is incredibly important. And it's what drives my role every single day. Can we go a little bit into how you think about the playbook of doing it?

4:56So when you, you started in this role, like, how did you think about like, I want this brand to get out there? What is like the, the, the one, the first couple of things you started with to start getting thinking about the brand as a whole? Yeah. So when I joined, I joined just over two years ago. So I'm in my third season here now at NWSL and it's changed so much in that short amount of time. And when I joined most of my career has been, all my career has been in sports. I was at major league baseball for just under 10 years. And then I was at a small, a smaller NFT startup, Candy Digital, which is sort of branched between tech and sports in many ways because they had a lot of sports partnerships, but it was always in sports.

5:41And so I had known of the NWSL. I knew what it was. I had heard the noise that was starting to develop around increase in attendance and in viewership. I'm familiar with many of the star players through the US Women's National Team and other international national teams, but I didn't really know what the cross-section of the most avid fan was. And it took me a while to learn who that fan was and what drives them and why they're interested in this league. And the way that the league has positioned itself in the past was smart and worthwhile and developed avid fans. But we quickly learned that it was a little bit more difficult for us to get that more casual fan, that more curious fan.

6:22We didn't have a lot of inroads into welcoming them into our marketing funnel, right? So then I, as the first brand director here at NWSL, I mean, I live at the top of that funnel. Everything that I'm doing needs to be for awareness. It needs to get our name out there and it needs to ensure that the most people possible are welcomed into this league. A lot of the previous marketing before I joined was a little more deeper into the funnel. It was more loyalty. It was more retention with that avid fan base. So we have a rock solid, steady, avid fan base now and we're always going to serve them. But now it's just creating messaging and ensuring that through our creative, through how we show up on TV, through how we show up on social media, all of our own and operated touch points, all of our partnerships, ensuring that we are broadening that type of funnel and welcoming more and more people in.

7:08and one of the i mean one of the for sports in general because i played college football and and one of the the untapped which not untapped but an audience that you need to tackle when you're you're growing a fan base is like the younger generation like the up and coming because the younger sports fans because they're going to be with the league longer than most people and you can get the parents, but you want to get the, the Gen Zs and now the Gen Alphas to, to be a part of that experience. So how are you, you, you going after those younger groups? How are you thinking about going up to those fan bases?

7:47Yeah, that's, that's one of, that's probably the most fun part of my job is that it, it, it demands that I stay young. I'm very much a millennial, very, very solidly within that many millennial generation, but I'm kind of forced to keep up with trends. And I like that. And I'm excited by that. What are people consuming? How are they spending their time? What are they watching on TV, on their phones, on YouTube, on TikTok? What is the zeitgeist of the day? And then how can we play into that? Not necessarily in a way that comes off inauthentic, but proving that our game is a game that's growing.

8:23And if it's a game that's growing, that means that we need to be welcoming in that group. And soccer is played by more youths in this country than any other sport. so we sort of have an inroad to begin with that doesn't always mean participation at a young age doesn't always mean that they're going to become a fan as they get older but it does mean that we at least have a touch point early on with many young people and we should find a way to start to convert them into longer fans so it's definitely something that we're aware of and focused on and that is a big fan base waiting to be tapped into so ensuring that we are creating and building our product for growth for the future, we always have an eye on the future, right?

9:06I mean, we're focused on the people who are our fans now, but also know that coming up behind them is a large active vocal group ready and willing to engage with us. And so we need to be prepared for that. And of course, there are some trends out there that show that Gen Z isn't necessarily as into sports as some of the other generations might be, but that doesn't deter us in any way. It actually just presents itself as more of an opportunity, I think. And so it's a challenge every day, but one that, uh, that drives us for sure. Women's soccer in general, I mean, in the United States has probably one of the biggest rep, like they're more actually well-known than men's soccer because in the national league, because they have been winning for so many years.

9:53So how do you like capitalize on that momentum because that national team has been crushing for the last, I don't know, 30, 40 years. Full of time. Yeah. They're dominant. Yeah. It's a great relationship that we have with U.S. soccer, but I think what's really cool because of the structure of soccer internationally is that those players play in our league throughout the year. The U.S. Women's National Team competes at certain windows, FIFA windows, throughout the year, whenever there's international tournaments or international friendly dates. But when that national team is not playing together, those players still play professionally and they play in our league.

10:34And I believe in the last most recent FIFA window, which just closed a few days ago, the NWSL sent 101 players to different national teams to play in those friendlies. So many of them obviously do go to the US Women's National Team, but whoever does play for, whether it be Canada or Zambia or Ireland or Wales, we have players all over the country who represent all over the world, excuse me, who represent their countries internationally. So it literally does mean in every sense, when we say we have the best players in the world, it is empirically true. And that's what's super exciting. And so whether it's the US Women's National Team or another international club or team, those players play in our league.

11:19And so it's a great way to leverage star power. And it's something that we're very focused on and energized by because there is a new crop, a new generation of player. Now that we've sort of had the retirements of the likes of Alex Morgan and Megan Rapinoe, Kelly O 'Hara, Allie Krieger, they're no longer in this league. There's another crop right now coming up that is immensely talented. And so there's a pipeline for sure here in the United States, but certainly in other countries as well, which lend itself to this opportunity that we have, which is it's incredibly important for us to take advantage of.

11:56And it's something that we focus on each and every day. Speaking about star power and the league, I know you just recently got a new league sponsor with Alex Cooper and Unwell, her new drink. How did that come about? Why was that like a perfect partnership for you all? I mean, I honestly heard of the National Women's Soccer League. Like, I knew it was going, but I didn't know the acronym until I saw the Unwell podcast. I knew there was a National Women's Soccer League, but I didn't know it was called NWSL. So how did that come about? And yeah, talk a little bit about that partnership that happened.

12:39Yeah. Well, you're a great case study. It's working, right? I mean, I think in everything that we want to do with our partners, whether that's a corporate sponsorship or whether it's a musical artist that we want to collaborate with or a third party media company that we feel like gives us good reach. We are looking for partners that reflect our values, one, but also bring with them the ability for us, going back to our conversation from before, to widen that funnel and bring more audiences and bring new audiences into the fold. And you're a perfect example of that, right? If you find us through the partnership that we have with Unwell, or because Trinity Rodman was a guest on an episode of Call Her Daddy, that's exactly what we're going for.

13:23That opens up roads for us and opens up a possibility to attract new people who don't necessarily know who we are, but at least it sparks a bit of curiosity in them. So now they're thinking, okay, well, Trinity was great on that episode, and she sounds like a really cool person and a great soccer player, and I want to check it out. That's what we want. That's exactly what we're going for. And the Unwell Hydration Partnership and many of the other partnerships that we've forged do just that. They connect us with a new audience that we feel like gives us an ability to grow and scale quickly, but also those partners reflect values that we have and we find important.

14:04And so it works on so many different levels. And the Unwell Hydration Partnership is certainly one of those that checks those boxes. and we're also i mean you talked a little bit that you had to stay younger but we also in a unique era for sports because of social media where now like personalities are driven and and in sports and leagues you see this with like f1 you see this with like all these like personalities driven and um so how is how is that becoming a way to like grow the brand with driving those personalities? It's of paramount importance. In many ways, our players are our brand. We're intrinsically linked.

14:49How players put themselves out there reflects upon the league. Generally speaking, new fans will follow or become attached to players first, then a club, and then a league. But the players are always first. And again, as somebody who spent almost 10 years at MLB, this is not necessarily a problem, but a challenge that they faced as well. And they've done a great job of breaking down those barriers and creating deep relationships with players and ensuring that those personalities are out there. And so people get attached to those players. And then once they get attached to those players, now they're in the fold and then they just become curious.

15:23And maybe, again, they'll buy a kit of Trinity Rodman because they heard her on Call Her Daddy, right? And that is great. Now they're in the fold. Now they're part of our community. And if they then tune in to watch a Washington Spirit game, great, that's another layer of engagement, but it has to start somewhere. But the players being out there and being able to show their personality is incredibly important. So us giving them those opportunities, forging relationships. This league has done a tremendous job to develop deeper relationships with players over the past few years. It's something that was certainly attractive when I joined was being able to take these players and make them stars if they're willing to be that, right?

16:05And it's not necessarily authentic or fair to take a player who doesn't want to do that and put them out there, but there's players who have interests. Finding those interests, finding ways for us to give them opportunities to share those interests and speak passionately about something that drives them only benefits us in the long run. So working more closely with players with the player association is definitely something that we've done more this year and plan on doing in the future because again building those brands builds ours in tandem could you go a little bit deeper into like this is a thing that every company should be doing anyway like with employees with with every every brand out there should have personalities but like what type of tools do you supply with the players so that to help them like what are those tools the tool could look like for a player?

16:58Some of the best ways are the most simple ways, which is just simply providing them with content that they don't otherwise have. So many of these players are active on social media, but for them finding content, whether that's a photo of their arrival fit, you know, some of the, so many of these players arrive at the stadium for their match and they're dressed to the nines and they're showing off and that content is being collected all the time, but they don't necessarily have it in their pockets. We have a program, which we call our live content coordinators, our LCC program. So we have somebody in market, at least one person in every NWSL market for every match.

17:35And they're there collecting content, photos, videos, phone content through our partnership with Google Pixel. So there's a tremendous amount of content that we own, operate and control. And so some of the, And again, some of the best ways to get done what you're asking is the simplest. So we take that content and then we will distribute it to players. So at the end of a game, a player will then have a choice of what to post. They'll have photo, they'll have some short video, and it's stuff that nobody else has because it's not out there in the ether, it's owned by the league. And simply providing players with that content, they can choose to post it or not.

18:13But if they do, again, it's unique content and it's high quality stuff. We're not just hiring anybody. We're hiring people, you know, young people who have tremendous talent and want to break into sports. There's no shortage of those kinds of people out there. So it's a really cool opportunity for them. But again, it gives us a leg up because it allows us to provide something to players that they wouldn't otherwise have. And if players see us giving them opportunities and being proactive about building their brands, again, that just starts to build a relationship which will prove fruitless years in the future.

18:43I'm also glad you're seeing this because I was going to mention like the MLB has such good brand recognition in general. But if you would ask me to name five MLB players that walked in a room, like I would probably not be able to do that. But if you did that with basketball, now it's getting to a stage where you're like, oh, now I know at least like 15 MLB players. So I could see that the rise on that. And I like that you guys are channeling the players in the National Women's Soccer League. I think that's that's a really cool way. And I also think that I want to go a little bit deeper on how you think about because you're right, like sports has a unique opportunity to produce a lot of high quality clips content because a lot of cool things happen.

19:36And these, these women are superhuman because I mean, they're the best of the best in the world doing some crazy things on the field. Um, so how, what is the, the, how do you partner with the content team to get those great clips out there and choose what clips to go out and when and stuff like that? Yeah. Our, our social media team, um, is, is incredibly good at what they do. I'm shocked day by day at the sheer volume of content that we're pushing off of our channels. Our social media team is super small, but incredibly strong. Small but mighty is what we like to say. And so we do get a ton of content ingested because of through our LCC program, which is not unique to us.

20:24This is a program that I know exists at other leagues too. The NFL does something similar. MLB does something similar. But it's so worthwhile that we invested in it early on. So to have this roster of people at every single match collecting this content, and again, we have an ability to even send them to non-match events. If a team is holding an international friendly or going on some sort of community visit, then we can collect content from that as well. And just creating this library of content is so valuable. The old refrain of content is king is so true, but it also applies to leagues and it applies to clubs.

21:02And so if we have that content and we're able to then give that back to players, players will generally have bigger followings than us. Our league is a bit of an outlier in that regard, but we still do have some players who have millions of followers on Instagram. And again, coming from MLB, there aren't many MLB players that have that, but our players do. And so it's more valuable to us if we have a photo of Dana Castellanos who plays for Portland Thorns. She has over a million Instagram followers. She should post that photo, right? We will still reap the benefits of it because it's out there and reaching more people.

21:35She just has a bigger follower than us. But we're not precious about who posts this content or who generates the first post. It's very much a rising tide situation. And so utilizing the reach of those players, but also giving them something to put out there and post so they don't have to think so much about it. It just makes sense for everybody involved. one another question i have for you is the mlb who had a very good brand recognition so how did you what is the biggest difference of working with a league that is on the rise with brand recognition than a league that kind of has been around for 100 100 plus years yeah over 150 years yeah yeah ultimately i spent so i spent just under 10 years there and i had a great time and i loved my time at MLB, but I was just interested in doing something different.

22:28But I can say now, having spent a little over two years here, it's a tremendous difference. And I am very energized by the challenge that I face every day at NWSL for that very reason, right? I mean, MLB, people generally know, been around for over 150 years. It's a legacy company with a tremendous, incredible history that's intertwined with American history in so many different ways. and our league at NWSL, we're in our 13th season. But for all intents and purposes, this league has sort of had to reinvent itself a few different times. And we're really like three years old in this current iteration of NWSL.

23:03So we're kind of starting from scratch. And that I think is so exciting and so energizing. And I love that challenge. I love being able to adopt this identity, which we've sort of given to ourselves as a challenger brand, somebody or a group of people who want to make noise, need to make noise and break through. And we're willing to take risks to do that. We're willing to put ourselves out there in ways that other leagues who have been around for so many years simply aren't, but they also don't necessarily have to, but we do. We do because we don't have the fan bases that they have yet. We don't have the history that they have yet, but we're building towards that.

23:44So again, with an eye to the future and keeping those Gen Z and Gen Alpha in mind, it gives us a bit of latitude that I think a lot of other leagues don't necessarily have or don't feel comfortable leaning into. Yeah, that's like the beauty of being a challenger brand or a challenger league is you're allowed to take these risks that other leagues don't necessarily think about or aren't going to do but like you said small mighty social team but growing a huge social following partnering with like one of the biggest i would say one of the big the probably the biggest podcaster in the world like these are small big things that are happening that are going to keep stacking and also people forget that like brand takes years and you're thinking like 10 15 30 years down the line You're not only thinking tomorrow, today.

24:46So how is that different? Because a lot of people who go into a company, their mindset is shrunk because you're going to make a brand impact fast. But with a league, you're thinking, how could I be a legacy league? How could this league last 100, 200, 300 years? Yeah. We even have that dynamic internally because we simply have to. It's the way the business is constructed. I have a bit of a longer view, a horizon that's a bit further away, a wider horizon than some others in the organization do simply because it's just a function of how the business works. I mean, we definitely still do need to generate revenue.

25:30We definitely still do need people to tune in. We do need people to be a little bit further into the funnel and we need to do some retention and loyalty type work. I get to live at a bit of a higher altitude and look a bit further out, but that doesn't mean that everybody is. Yes, we're building for the future. We are on this tremendous trajectory. We are doing as much as we can to ensure continued growth. But again, even internally, there are some people who need to see one day, one week, one month in advance. And so when I come in, there are some projects of things that I have to work on that are a bit more time sensitive.

26:06I'm trying to give you an example of that. Like when we play our championship match, which is in November, late November this year, November 22nd, you know, the horizon is quite clear and like there's a clear finish line of November 22nd. And by then we're going to need to hit X number of viewers for that match on CBS. and we're going to need to sell why number of tickets. So it's very goal oriented and there's very, it's very clear what we're driving towards, but in those in-between periods when we're not necessarily working on a particular tentpole moment on our calendar, then I do get to sit back a little bit and look a bit further out.

26:43And that's what I like is that my, my job is not necessarily a series of staccato moments that I have to have engagement with day by day or week by week. Sometimes I do get super busy and focused on something in the immediate term, but otherwise I get to look a bit further out. And that's really what excites me because I get to look a year or even two years down the road, what's on the calendar, what's coming up. For example, there's, you know, men's world cup is going to be here in the United States and in Canada and in Mexico next summer. How can we, how can we benefit from that? There's going to be more eyes on soccer generally.

27:18Uh, and it's an opportunity for us. It presents its challenges for sure in terms of our calendar and when we play our matches, but more than anything, it's an opportunity. So again, being able to look a bit further out is something that I like and is not necessarily something that a lot of other businesses get an ability to do just because of the way that it's structured. So when you're planning for something like a championship match and you have to sell X number of tickets or you have to get an X amount of people there. What are some things you think as a brand marketer to do that? I mean, you could only do certain things as other people on your team that could do.