SBJ Marketing: A new playbook for CMOs

“If I had to choose between baseball’s Hall of Fame and first-class citizenship for all of my people, I would say first-class citizenship.” — Jackie Robinson

Sports marketers are rethinking how they spend, who they work with and how they show up with consumers, moving beyond traditional sponsorship models and toward strategies built on collaboration, calculated risk and deeper cultural connection.

Speaking Wednesday at the CAA World Congress of Sports in L.A., New Balance Brand President and CMO Chris Davis and Samsung Electronics America’s Keena Grigsby, CMO and VP/Mobile Experience, outlined how their organizations are approaching athlete partnerships, increased social and digital investment and brand growth in a panel that CAA Sports’ Adam Sloan moderated.

A central theme is that today’s sports partnerships must go beyond logo placement and traditional endorsement deals. Davis said that New Balance views its athlete relationships as “co-authored,” with talent helping shape products, campaigns and storytelling.

He added that the company takes an athlete-first approach, using larger league and team relationships as amplifiers for those stories. New Balance partners with athletes such as Mavericks F Cooper Flagg and Dodgers P/DH Shohei Ohtani, then connects those relationships with broader properties like the NBA or MLB to extend reach.

Grigsby said that Samsung applies a similar approach, prioritizing authentic integrations that connect products, talent and media rather than inorganically attaching athletes to campaigns.

She pointed to Samsung’s recent NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournament activations, which included a campaign featuring Duke basketball freshmen F Cameron Boozer and G Cayden Boozer and their father, former NBAer Carlos Boozer, alongside social media, giveaways, seat upgrades and media partnerships with House of Highlights and Bleacher Report. Grigsby said the effort was built to ensure the company had a “360 integrated campaign.”

Both panelists described their brands as challengers, even at global scale, and said that mindset influences how they allocate marketing dollars.

Davis detailed New Balance’s internal “50-30-20” framework: 50% of spend goes toward proven tactics, 30% toward calculated risk and 20% toward highly experimental ideas with a higher probability of failure. Successful experiments then move into larger budget buckets over time. Davis: “At the end of the day, we’re trying to act like a 120-year-old startup company.”

Grigsby added that Samsung has similarly been shifting more investment into digital and social platforms: “I’m not saying that linear TV is dead, it’s not. But we have been doubling down on our social and digital approach.”

Women’s sports and emerging properties were another focus. Grigsby noted Samsung’s founding partnership with Unrivaled, allowing the brand to reach female basketball audiences in a more authentic way. The company created a Samsung Rest Club where athletes can recover, recharge and review performance insights after games.

Davis and Grigsby noted their companies do not separate men’s and women’s sports internally, instead categorizing talent by “face of brand” and “face of sport.” Davis pointed to athletes such as women’s tennis player Coco Gauff and track and field stars Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas as central to the company’s growth and cultural positioning.

Davis: “I don’t think it matters if they’re male or female. ... If an athlete can transcend sport, they can transcend sport.”

Amid a discussion centered on budget allocation, media platforms and growth strategy, both panelists returned to the emotional value of sports. Davis recounted one lesson he gets from watching his three daughters play soccer, simply saying, “Sports are fun.”

MLB started the season with an intriguing new collection of niche apparel licensees, generally serving sports and lifestyle collections: Redvanly, Baseball Lifestyle 101, casual footwear brand Hey Dude and Brunch.

The Redvanly apparel brand, which pioneered the likes of “stretch performance” denim, is a unique amalgam of golf, tennis, lifestyle and leisure elements, now with MLB indicia layered in as a new licensee.

In its first league deal, the New Jersey-based brand is making around 25 SKUs per team of licensed polos, quarter-zips and hoodies. Redvanly has wide green-grass retail distribution and is expanding into its own retail locations (three of them), along with big box and specialty sporting-goods retail.

“Our brand is a promise of sports and performance for any lifestyle, with price points maybe a bit lower or competitive with Peter Millar and Johnnie-O,” said CMO Mike Shakespeare.

Director of Licensing Brendan Hyland said MLB is just a first step. “Within three years, I’d like to see us licensed across all the big four leagues,” he said.

This is the first — but we’re sure not the final time — that we will write these words about a licensee: Baseball Lifestyle 101 started as an Instagram account for a 15-year-old. We’re told it has since become a paradigm for how social media can grow and amplify a startup licensee.

The “baseball lifestyle” clothing line started in 2017 has grown to be a brand with more than $150 million in annual sales. It’s gone from DTC on-line sales to brick-and-mortar at around 10 stores of its own, to distribution with retailers as significant as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Scheels and Academy. Now as a full-fledged MLB licensee, BL101 has the challenge of maintaining its fanciful lifestyle sensibilities and designs while finding the appropriate mix with MLB’s IP.

Hey Dude’s casual footwear is somewhere between, slip-ons and moccasins. It has been another story of extraordinary growth — it’s now a billion-dollar brand — leading to its $2.5 billion acquisition in 2022 by Crocs, itself an MLB licensee since 2007.

Fellow casual footwear label Brunch’s specialty is slippers, with robes to match. As the company puts it: “By blending nostalgia with modern functionality, Brunch creates a reason to relax.” So far, it is limited to a “Yankees for Brunch” collection and DTC distribution with slippers priced starting at $108 and a $210 robe.

There are several staff appointments to report at Intersport. Drew Russell is being elevated from EVP properties and media assets to president of content and live events. In the case of Intersport, that includes 20 properties (college, golf, pickleball and others) and hundreds of hours of content, highlighted by legacy properties, like the collegiate slam dunk and three-point contests, and women’s all-star.

“We’ve always thought here that the power of live is undeniable,” Russell said. “Now, it seems their popularity is growing further, and there are more ways than ever to share them.”

Russell, an 18-year Intersport vet and 2013 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree, will continue to report to President Brian Graybill.

Call Morgan Howe a boomerang. Howe, a 2025 SBJ Game Changer, began her career with Intersport in 2009, rising to AE. Howe has rejoined as SVP and head of growth — a newly created position.

“There are so many categories, like health care, wellness, fintech, even F&B, now making their way into culture, sports and experiential,” she said. “And with all the big events [World Cup and Olympics] coming up, many more want to be part of that.”

Howe was with United Entertainment Group for the past three-plus years, most recently as EVP/head of partnership strategy. She will report to Jim Kenyon, president of Intersport’s recently rebranded Partnerships Experiences unit.

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• TaylorMade Golf CEO David Abeles says the company saw immediate returns on Rory McIlroy winning back-to-back Green Jackets on Sunday at Augusta National, driving its best single-day web traffic of the year so far, reports SBJ’s Josh Carpenter.
• Barilla is selling racing wheel-shaped pasta in a new retail activation around its F1 sponsorship, which includes selling dishes at the F1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix later this month, writes SBJ’s Adam Stern.
• Elevate appointed Willie DiBlasi as COO, and he’ll continue in his role as CFO, notes SBJ’s Grace Kut. The move occurs as the firm expands across new markets and service lines.
• A little over a month after Geico signed UConn G Azzi Fudd to its first female athlete endorsement deal, the insurance company aligned Monday night with Fudd’s newest team — the Wings — in a multiyear sponsorship, reports SBJ’s Tom Friend.
• The WNBA and Mars signed a multiyear deal making the M&M’s brand the league’s “official chocolate sponsor” in a newly created category, writes SBJ’s Na’Andre Emerson.