The WNBA Phoenix Mercury is getting a significant in-state media boost thanks to an Arizona Department of Health Services campaign that uses the Mercury to promote its anti-tobacco message.
The ad campaign, tagged "Inhale Life — It's a Girl Thing," launched last Monday and is part of a three-year sponsorship the department signed with the Mercury earlier this year.
The campaign targets girls ages 7 to 18 and uses Mercury players Lisa Harrison, Adrian Williams and Tamicha Jackson as role models. The campaign includes television spots, radio spots, billboards and print ads that will run throughout Arizona.
The ads promote tobacco-free living and tell parents that a Mercury game is "a great place to connect with your daughter and teach her about determination, healthy choices and to inhale life."
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| Adrian Williams is among the Mercury players telling Arizona girls to "Inhale Life." |
"It's a fabulous campaign for the Mercury," said Rick Welts, president of the Phoenix Suns and Mercury. "The biggest piece is awareness and the advertising that, frankly, our team could never afford to do without ADHS."
In the first year, the department will spend $175,000 on sponsor inventory such as signs, promotional activity, community relations programs that include the team's players and coaches, and 30-second spots during the team's television and radio broadcasts, said Rose Conner, assistant director for public health services at the department.
The department will spend an additional sum of as much as $300,000 this year on television, radio and print media outside of team broadcasts, she said. The campaign is scheduled to appear on 42 billboards across the state, air on seven radio stations and appear extensively on television during top morning news shows, afternoon talk shows such as "Dr. Phil" and "Oprah," in prime time and on programming that skews to younger audiences. The time buys for the department are done by Mercury officials.
The department and the Mercury have not specified plans beyond this year. Funding for the Mercury sponsorship and its other anti-tobacco campaigns comes largely from Arizona's tobacco tax, Conner said.
PWBA FUTURE IN THE AIR: This past weekend's Professional Women's Bowling Association tournament in Dallas may have been the league's last. As of press time, the PWBA had yet to secure necessary investors or a new owner that would enable the league to operate beyond Sunday's event, the last of the spring/summer tour.
The league was scheduled to take a break and restart play the second week in September but will be unable to without funding.
League President John Falzone said he planned to meet with league officials so they could have some kind of statement about the status of the tour Sunday.
"I don't know what that statement is yet, but I know we need to say something," Falzone said last Tuesday.
League owner John Sommer, who's poured more than $4 million into the league since it was founded in 1981, decided early last month that he would not be able to continue funding the tour without new investors or a new owner.
To make it through its five scheduled fall events, the league needs about $500,000, Falzone said.
WNBA ALL-STAR ACTIVITY: WNBA officials expected more sponsor activation than ever during the league's All-Star Game and related festivities in New York this past weekend.
All but four of the league's 16 sponsors planned to participate through in-arena contests and promotions and at the 35th Street Jam, an interactive fan fest and concert, said Mary Reiling Spencer, vice president of marketing partnerships for the WNBA.
New activation this year included the family-targeted "Swiffer Obstacle Course," sponsored by Procter & Gamble's Swiffer sweeper brand, which was to be held during time-outs; Verizon's sponsorship of wireless voting for the game's MVP; and Adidas' Free Throw Key, where fans entered into a shooting contest in which they had to spell Adidas from various spots. Procter & Gamble also sponsored the main concert stage at the 35th Street Jam.
Jennifer Lee can be reached at jlee@sportsbusinessjournal.com.
