• by Karl Greenberg , November 11, 2015

Soccer is growing, but women's soccer has a sliver of the total soccer audience. And even after winning the Women’s World Cup last summer, when it beat Japan, the U.S. Women's National Team has a long way to go to establish awareness and clout if it wants to grow its brand and fans. 

Tom Lillig, at Stone Ward advertising, among whose clients is the U.S. Soccer Federation, including both men’s and women's national teams, spoke on a panel about the women's side of the game at MediaPost’s Marketing Sports Soccer in America on Wednesday. He pointed out that the Harris Poll last year found football to be the top sport in the U.S. Where was women's soccer? Number 18. 

And did the women’s team’s performance in the Women’s World Cup final, during which 20 million people tuned in, help lift the brand? “It created brand evangelists.” But he said that, while the performance of the women's team during the games was a big boon to women's soccer, the message must stay fresh. And social media is key. “It has been an efficient tool; but you have to be authentic, give fans access, and do it all the time. That’s the mantra, and a lot of players also use it themselves.”

An example of that, he notes, has been the #SheBelieves campaign, which happened organically on social media. “Women athletes are prolific in social media in terms of telling that story. When they approached Stone Ward, they said they wanted to talk about empowerment, paying forward what their predecessors had done in terms of opening up the sport." The #SheBelieves hashtag was started by one player, not the agency, and turned into a rallying cry that the team used to get out a message of empowerment. “By the end of the World Cup, that hash had registered half a million usages from fans.”

Then Twitter got involved. “They came to us asking if we could create an emoji hash flag,” which they did. 

Diane Brandis Scavuzzo, editor in chief of Goal Nation, said you can't lose by identifying the sport with its player. “That creates a powerful and long-lasting impression, and I think women's national team players have done this well, with regular posts and massive followings.” It helps if one of the followers has his own huge following. Lillig recalled that Tom Hanks sent out four or five tweets, naming every single player on the team, saying “You are my heroes.” 

Said Lillig, “You would think that his natural affiliation would be more toward baseball, but he chose to become a superfan. That kind of activity helps give permission for everyone who is not closely tied to soccer to get behind the team.” The other benefit is budget. Brands go to social media because they can create content without raising the hackles of the CFO. “And it's all content marketing,” he said, adding that the World Cup Final generated nearly three million tweets over the six hours of the Women’s Final. “It is a smart play to go out with heavy social strategy.” 

Women's soccer could use sponsorship dollars, and more deals like Nike’s sponsorship of the team. The good news is Clorox signed up as a U.S. Women’s Team sponsor this year, and kicked off a social campaign, #GreatAssist covering several of its brands. In May, Coppertone signed a multi-year deal with both U.S. Soccer and the Women’s National Team.