Big moments in the sporting calendar naturally attract commercial interest from brands. In women’s sport, that interest is accelerating. Four in five brands want to invest in women’s sport partnerships in the next five years, according to the Women’s Sport Trust.
One business that has been investing in women’s football for multiple years now is accountancy software company Xero, which signed deals with FIFA and the FA in 2022.
As an official partner of England’s Lionesses, Xero’s activations don’t just hinge on “tentpole” moments like this month’s Euros in Switzerland, says Sam Daniels, head of brand and campaign marketing in the UK.
Big moments in the sporting calendar naturally attract commercial interest from brands. In women’s sport, that interest is accelerating. Four in five brands want to invest in women’s sport partnerships in the next five years, according to the Women’s Sport Trust.
One business that has been investing in women’s football for multiple years now is accountancy software company Xero, which signed deals with FIFA and the FA in 2022.
As an official partner of England’s Lionesses, Xero’s activations don’t just hinge on “tentpole” moments like this month’s Euros in Switzerland, says Sam Daniels, head of brand and campaign marketing in the UK.
“There’s a lot of focus on it, but I think a lot of the work is done between the tournaments, where it’s not at the top of the news agenda, it’s not at the top of everybody’s attention,” says Daniels.
However, the huge impact of tournaments cannot be understated. Xero’s Lioness campaign, ‘Feel on top of your game’, launched this week and spotlights the parallels between the mindset of elite athletes and its customer base of small business owners.
“So, while you see the work going out around a tournament – and we want to be seen as a particularly supportive partner throughout a tournament – it’s not just a tournament partnership.”
Moving on from dreaming bigger
The campaign marks a “progression” from predecessor ‘Dream Bigger’, which ran during the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. In the tournament, Xero was the lead sponsor of ITV’s coverage, perhaps unexpectedly for a B2B brand.
“That was about progress being made in the women’s game,” says Daniels. “And I think progress has continued, and that actually we feel we’re now talking about the athletes, rather than the progress.”
It’s a shift that reflects how some brands are evolving narratives in women’s sports marketing. Many in the industry have complained about brands over-indexing on urging fans to support female athletes because it’s the right thing to do, rather than acknowledging the business benefits of effective women’s sport marketing.
For Xero, this campaign is about the Lionesses being at their peak as athletes, rather than just focusing on “the movement of the women’s game forward”.
Creating a parallel between the Lionesses, the wider women’s football community and small businesses is important, says Daniels, because “it’s on every brand to ensure that they’re clear on the connection” in partnerships. It’s also particularly important for a brand like Xero to show the connection, given B2B brands have traditionally lagged behind their B2C counterparts when it comes to sports sponsorship.
“I think you can only do that when you realise the shared values between the property and the business.”
At Xero, it ladders up: The business works with the FA to “actively support the wider football community” because many women’s football clubs in the country are small businesses.
“If they can run a better business, they’re going to get more people playing football, the better the grassroots pipeline, the better the flow up to the pro game, but also the better the impact on the local economy,” explains Daniels.
Extending beyond its work with FIFA and the FA, Xero has a partnership with Women in Football, an organisation providing networking, events and more for the women’s football community, to provide mentorship.
“At one end, we’ve got the partnership with the Lionesses and this campaign, really shouting about helping you feel on top of your game,” says Daniels. “And then the other end of the spectrum of our partnership is really enabling feeling on top of your game, by providing tangible support for the women’s football community.”
Playing the long game
Having a multi-year commitment to women’s football gives Xero the opportunity to track over a longer period of time.
Is it paying off? Daniels believes so.
“We’ve seen long-term success over the last three years,” says Daniels, noting an uptick in brand awareness and brand perception following its 2023 World Cup activity. “We expect to see that again.”
Success is never guaranteed. Tournament performance and early exits can impact how much exposure brands receive. The positive impact on brand tracking and performance “comes from learning on that journey how we can best use the partnership in an authentic way,” says Daniels. “You’ve got to go into a partnership and learn from it as you’re [doing] it.”
For brands sponsoring both women’s and men’s sport, return on investment often differs because of the disparity in scale, investment and reach. Xero doesn’t have this point of comparison as women’s football is its sole sports partnership, and Daniels sees this focus as an advantage.
This focus is a “good thing” for Xero, says Daniels, because his team can dig deep into understanding the Lionesses and working with the FA.
In terms of how it tracks, the content “works incredibly hard,” he adds. “And in the last three years, we’ve got more capable at measuring that as well.”
“Hopefully, when we look back at this campaign, we can see the long-term and short-term impact of the campaigns we’re running.”
