The WNBA Takes Fans Deeper with New 2025 Season Campaign
For fans of the WNBA, today is, undoubtedly, an exciting occasion. A new season is officially tipping off tonight with a 7:30pm EST doubleheader, beloved stars will be returning to the court, and crucially, the first steps down the path toward finding out who will be crowned champions for the 2025 season will be taken.
Of course, the momentum and pre-season buzz, in many ways, has been aided by the league’s effective marketing tactics to this point. At the WNBA Draft 2025 Presented by State Farm, a great amount of hype was built with the reveal of a new, season-long marketing campaign, ‘Viewer Discretion’, which was highlighted via a 30-second anthem film.
As you can see, the ad, just like the league it’s repping, is both ‘extremely confident’, and ‘devastatingly good’. The creative approach is original, fun and stand-out. Starting April 17th, the WNBA will be building upon this theme to highlight the league’s most talented players, kicking off with a spot starring 2024 Kia WNBA MVP A’ja Wilson (which you can view below, early!).
According to WNBA chief marketing officer Phil Cook, fans are in for a lot of similarly exciting marketing this year. While A’ja is just the first name to be featured in “wave one” of the campaign’s run (which will also include work centred around Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, Napheesa Collier and Sabrina Ionescu – each with their own advisory warnings), after AT&T WNBA All-Star 2025 in July, a second round of ads will be kickstarted, followed by a third come playoff time.
“This year, we wanted to go a little deeper around sharing the contributions some of our star athletes bring to the game,” he explains. “Last year, with ‘Welcome to the W’, we talked about the league in its totality, but now we're going to feature different athletes and what makes them special within the WNBA ecosystem and the game itself. The whole intent is to bring a layer of knowledge and insight to the new fans, so that they get to know our athletes a little better.”
In many ways, this decision to market in service of the fans is a North Star for the league’s branding efforts. It’s no secret that across recent years, there’s been a meteoric rise in WNBA viewership and support – something the CMO attributes to the recent rookie classes, which have brought in an abundance of fans who followed the new professionals through their college playing days. However, this level of audience retention has taken real brand effort - specifically, research into what keeps people feeling good about investing time and energy into the league.
Notably, in many ways, the aforementioned ‘Welcome to the W’ was a proving point in this regard. A clear demonstration that fans of sport and the culture surrounding it love feeling addressed and seen, the lessons learned from that endeavour directly influenced the creative evolution into ‘Viewer Discretion’.
“We ran last year's ad pretty much from the start of season, all the way through our playoffs,” Phil notes. “On the other hand, this new campaign allows us to float different iterations of creative throughout the entire year, because of the way we're now presenting these athletes.”
That said, simply creating multiple pieces of content throughout a season was never going to be a guaranteed recipe for success on its own. Rather, Phil asserts that growing a fandom lies in finding attractive hooks and twists to bring in and engage audiences – something which directly translated into this year’s creative brief.
“We knew we wanted to talk about how great A'ja Wilson is, for example, but how could we do it in a way that was going to be a little disruptive, a little ownable, and something only we would do? This is how Wieden+Kennedy [Portland] got to this approach. The warning message at the start is the hook. So, you watch the next couple of seconds, and then you recognise, 'Ah, this is an ad about A'ja Wilson and her dominance – this is cool!', all while the viewer discretion messaging provides a youthful, playful touch. It's not just putting highlights out there for highlights' sake. That's a big part of what makes these films effective.”
In equal measure, however, is just the fact that Wieden+Kennedy seems to have a penchant for this sort of work. Not only does the agency have a history of creating in the basketball space – something Phil experienced first-hand during his time at Nike – but as the team behind last year’s WNBA campaign, they too had the opportunity to mull over its success, and contemplate what an ideal evolution might look like.
“Continuing to work with Wieden+Kennedy was an easy decision,” he adds. “The team is clearly very comfortable in understanding the tonality, expectations and how it needs to represent athletes in its creative. Any time we reference Wieden+Kennedy as our agency, the athletes immediately understand the value of the opportunity. Its ability to depict the players’ emotions and approach to the game is fan-centric, and creatively excellent.”
With all that said, this year’s process has not been without its challenges. In particular, despite the seeming ease with which the campaign came together, the CMO notes that choosing the athletes to feature has been a way bigger challenge than some might expect.
Explaining that each player has two stories to choose from – who they are both on and off the court – Phil emphasises that not only did the team have to select a mere five athletes from the WNBA’s 156 players, but then choose what side of their lives to depict. An “embarrassment of riches”, as he puts it, the perpetual process of identifying who best might serve fan interests proved incredibly difficult – both a good problem to have, but in equal measure, agonising.
“I never want to say, 'OK, I think we know who to feature’ early, because there's always going to be another great moment that needs to be celebrated and elevated,” he says. “We never want the process to stop, but at some point you've just got to make a choice.”
This sentiment is something Phil intends to carry into the selection process for the second wave of ‘Viewer Discretion’. Revealing that no specific athletes have been picked yet, due to the WNBA waiting to see who the breakout stories are at the start of the season, he’s confident that it’ll probably be a mix of predicted athletes, and those far exceeding expected value… and that once again, it won’t be a simple affair.
“We'll be racing against the clock,” he adds. “Identifying that next subset of athletes is going to be challenging, but we use a lot of information that we gather through other means. We publish a lot of content, we tell a lot of stories on our app, and we monitor engagement across those platforms. From that, we’re really starting to identify what resonates in terms of fandom.”
To this end, the CMO also has praise for the efforts of the media – especially that which exists outside the typical basketball sphere – for assisting the league’s current overarching goal of connecting with supporters. Explaining that this normalisation of coverage has done wonders, he states that this has been a critical factor in getting brands which are non-endemic to basketball to place WNBA players at the front and centre of their marketing initiatives – yet another thing which drives overall fan investment.
“We have a simple mantra that we filter stuff through: ‘We want to make it easier to be a fan of the WNBA’,” he says. “When you unlock access to the stories, the game, and the people of the WNBA, that's going to engage and drive fandom very quickly, because it's worthy material. So, the fact that today, you can't watch a sporting or cultural event without seeing our athletes in some of the marketing and advertising? That’s amazing. The more you see them, and the more you understand who they are, that’s what drives everything.”
While it’s yet to be seen if the results of this latest endeavour will continue to push things in this same direction, nevertheless, even today, ahead of the season’s start, Phil is already immensely proud of the work. A firm believer that this new initiative will shift audience support from the league itself to the teams and players, he highlights that if all goes according to plan, the WNBA’s identity will be cemented as a competitor to any other sports broadcast in the region – a remarkable transformation for the brand.
“Just a few years ago, we were scraping for an identity and attention, looking for an angle that would get people to care,” he concludes. “But we can now say that everything about the WNBA is at the same level as the other top leagues in North America. We're very proud of the fact that our athletes are seen as the greatest in the world. They compete harder than anyone. And because of that, we belong in any conversation around great athletes, great sport, great viewing, and great engagement. When you have that level of relevance in today's ecosystem, that’s when you know you've started to resonate and make a difference.”
