Pickleball is not only your parents’ sport anymore. The game, a paddle sport similar to tennis, is often associated with retirement homes or country clubs. After a spike in popularity during the pandemic, however, pickleball has gone mainstream.

More folks have gone pickleballin’:

• Networks like CBS are broadcasting games
• The New York Times declared pickleball “ready for prime time”
• Major sports brands are selling pickleball gear and sponsoring pickleball players
• The kids have caught on, with emerging pickleball influencers as young as Gen Alpha

The growth is, in part, thanks to the pandemic—pickleball is easy to learn and play in socially distanced settings with family, friends, and neighbors—but also by the design of marketers and brands. In October 2019, USA Pickleball, the sport’s national governing body, hired a new marketing consultant, Laura Gainor, who went on to become director of media relations for the organization, and even picked up a paddle as a result of this work.

Spruce up: During the summer of 2020, USA Pickleball unveiled a brand refresh, the work of Gainor and Milwaukee-based ad agency Boelter + Lincoln. Part of the refresh involved positioning the sport as more youthful, said Andy Larsen, partner at Boelter + Lincoln and its VP and director of public relations.

“We wanted to grow the game and reposition it to make it not just something that was perceived as an old-person sport, but something that appealed to everyone,” Larsen told Marketing Brew.

The refresh included a new name, logo, and website, all based on Boelter + Lincoln’s qualitative and quantitative research, according to its creative director Garth Cramer.

As pickleball has gained traction with consumers, sports brands have caught on to the trend:

• OS1st, a brand known for its compression braces and socks, became the “official sock and compression-bracing brand of USA Pickleball” in August, and the “official sock brand” of the Professional Pickleball Association this year, OS1st’s marketing director Stephanie Lee told us.
• Franklin Sports was an early entrant to the pickleball space, having first gotten involved six years ago, according to Aaron Stahl, the company’s brand partnerships specialist for pickleball.
• It started building a roster of sponsored pickleballers in 2017, all under the age of 30, with the majority between the ages of 18 and 25, Stahl said.

Pickleball for kids: Jack Loughridge, a seven-year-old pickleball athlete from Las Vegas, said he doesn’t know many other kids his age who play, so he competes alongside his dad. But, according to Jack and his mom, Courtney Loughridge, sports brands are on the hunt for young pickleball ambassadors.

Read more about how brands are working to get younger generations hooked on pickleball.—AM

Citigroup is making its stance on abortion rights known, telling shareholders in a regulatory filing that it will cover travel costs for employees seeking abortions out of state following Texas’s SB8 and similar laws popping up around the country.

Citigroup is now one of the first public companies to adjust policies in response to abortion limitations, but as Axios notes, it’s possible others may have done so quietly. Apple confirmed to the outlet that their insurance policy also covers abortions, including any necessary travel.

Big (social) picture: So far, neither Apple nor Citibank have publicly touted their stances on social media or in ads the way companies like OKCupid have. Match Group, which owns OKCupid, has been vocal in its support of people seeking abortions since SB8 went into effect.

• In September, Match Group CEO Shar Dubey created a fund for Texas-based employees to receive out-of-state care.
• Bumble created a fund supporting reproductive rights and publicized it on social media.
• Uber and Lyft have publicly stated that they would cover legal fees for drivers subject to SB8 action.

Top-down: Citigroup’s policy change is the latest under CEO Jane Fraser, the first woman to lead a major Wall Street bank and someone who has not been shy about her values since stepping into the role.

“We bankers like to focus on return on equity as a number that measures financial performance,” she told Time in 2020. “But for society today, the word equity doesn’t appear on a balance sheet. Equity is about the changes we need to make to deliver social justice.”

What comes next: As more large employers respond to the Texas decision, it’s unclear if advertisers will start incorporating company stances into their creative or stay quiet to avoid getting caught in the crosshairs.

With other controversial policies in play, like Gov. Abbott’s directive to investigate some  pediatric gender-affirming health care as child abuse, the pressure on companies that do business in Texas to take a stance on such issues appears to be mounting. Read more about this important trend in tomorrow’s newsletter.—KH

“I was proud to be a member of the Disney cast. As of today, all I am able to feel is shame.”

“It’s hard to have any excitement and optimism for the future of the company right now.”

“This is not the company I came to work for some 15 years ago.”

Those statements appear among nearly 200 anonymous responses a group of Disney employees say they have collected and published to illustrate the “magnitude of the threat to LGBTQIA+ safety represented by” Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill and push back against the company’s initially tepid public response to the legislation.

As the company prepares a town hall to address the response, some Disney employees are planning a full-day walkout on Tuesday to push for more meaningful action from the company. The planned actions, which come after weeks of controversy and damage control from Disney, underscore the rise in expectations for corporations to take public stances on some social, political, and human-rights issues.

Get me up to speed: A bill that passed the Florida House and Senate and is awaiting the signature of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, would prohibit most discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Disney, which employs tens of thousands of employees in the state, initially stayed silent, saying public statements can be “counterproductive,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek wrote to employees in an internal email; Chapek later told shareholders the company had attempted to “work behind the scenes to try to influence lawmakers not to pass it.”

That stance has since changed. Disney, which has made political contributions to supporters of the bill, says it has paused political donations in the state temporarily and attempted to donate $5 million to the LGBTQ+ rights organization the Human Rights Campaign, which had as recently as this year named Disney a top workplace for LGBTQ+ equality. (The HRC did not accept the donation.)

“You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down,” Chapek said in a mea culpa to Disney employees. “I am sorry.”

Not enough: Some Disney employees have taken the rare tack of speaking out against the company. Benjamin Siemon, who wrote for Disney’s DuckTales reboot, called Chapek’s efforts a “half-hearted triage,” while Dana Terrace, a writer and animator who created the Disney Channel animated series The Owl House, tweeted that she was “tired of making Disney look good.”

Meanwhile, some employees from the animation studio Pixar alleged in a letter that Disney corporate executives asked for cuts to “nearly every moment of overtly gay affection” in its storytelling.—KS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren't those.

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Looking for more? Check out our latest article discussing DDB North America tripling their “experience” team as in-person gatherings return, sponsored by Vimeo.*

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