Mathur feels the equal compensation issue is closely tied to Luna Bar's brandMarc Bryan-Brown
A one-on-one session on Day 1 of the Octagon Sports Marketing Symposium looked at a recent case of a brand stepping up in the name of equal pay. Back on Equal Pay Day on April 2, Luna Bar (a division of health snack Clif Bar) made the bold move of donating $718,750 to the USWNT as it was fighting to close the pay gap with its male counterparts ahead of the FIFA Women’s World Cup. That donation allowed each player on the women’s side to get $31,250, which made up the difference in roster bonus with the USMNT players. Clif Bar Senior Marketing Dir for Luna Ritu Mathur spoke to conference attendees about the genesis of the donation, the metrics following the move and what might be next for the brand.
- On how the USWNT idea came about: “It was an issue that we really felt was close to our brand. We've always been about championing women, inspiring women and trying to support them in any way that we can. And so, the past three years we'd been talking about the gender pay gap specifically. The first two years, we really focused on just raising awareness. We worked with partners to help create wage negotiation workshops for women and things like that. And then in this third year, we just wanted to do something we felt could really make an impact. … We identified the roster bonus as one that just felt like a really black and white example.”
- On the response to the donation: “I was blown away by the response -- not just from consumers -- but from media and the sports world as well. There was a lot of dialogue and conversation around should a company or a brand do this and is it taking the responsibility off of, in this case, U.S. Soccer to close that gap? That sparked some really interesting conversations. … We generated over 4 billion media impressions from this campaign, which was more than in our 25+ years of existing as a company. Over 3 billion of that was earned media. So, that was just amazing. I was definitely not expecting that.”
- On continuing to support the team through the WWC: “We didn't have a ton of money in our marketing budgets. (The donation) was a big chunk of money for us to donate. And we thought that would kind of be it. But when we saw the response that we got, we just felt like we had to continue to support this team. … We held a cocktail reception and panel in Paris at the Eiffel Tower -- inside the Eiffel tower -- and wanted to also just further the conversation around gender equality.”
- On potentially sponsoring a jersey for something like a WNBA or NWSL team: “We haven't done a lot of that in the past, but I think as long as it's tied to something bigger than just putting a logo on a jersey, that's interesting. For us, it's being an active participant in a way that is making change or making an impact. That's kind of the lens that I look at. A lot of sports organizations will ask us to put our logo and sponsor a local team. ... We don't feel like that's enough. We want to be able to work with the team, maybe partner with their athletes, or whatever it might be to have a bigger conversation.”
