This story is the eighth in a series on women leaders in sports and sports marketing. Read the rest of the profiles here and keep reading Marketing Brew for more profiles to come.
Marketing exec Trish Tulloch liked college sports before it was cool.
Nowadays, between the astronomical rise of NCAA women’s basketball and the increasing prevalence of NIL deals, some college athletes are just as famous, if not more so, than the pros. (Looking at you, Caitlin Clark.) But, as a former Northwestern University field hockey player herself, Tolluch has had a brain for collegiate athletics and sponsorships since her internship and grad school days in the ’90s.
“My common thread that I really found myself enjoying was working with brands to figure out how sports and entertainment could deliver their marketing goals,” Tulloch told Marketing Brew. “All sports are one of my passions, but I really love everything to do with college sports, even with all the changes that it’s going through.”
Now, Tulloch serves as a VP at Endeavor-owned cultural marketing agency 160over90, where she’s one of a few college sports experts working across the agency’s clients at a time when many brands are increasingly interested in tying up with college sports and athletes.
Sign of the times
During her undergrad days, Tulloch said she thought her dream sports job was to be an athletic trainer or a team doctor. “If not for organic chemistry, I probably would have made it through,” she said.
Instead, she got a bachelor’s degree in business management from Northwestern before interning in the marketing department at Yale University, where she had her first taste of working with sports sponsors. After about a year, she went back to school to earn a master’s degree in sports management and marketing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Tulloch’s first full-time job after that—and an internship at IPG sports agency Octagon—was at Omnicom agency The Marketing Arm, where she worked on Pepsi’s sponsorship of the NCAA championships. A highlight from her two-and-a-half years there, she says, was helping Pepsi include the women’s Final Four mark on its Aquafina packaging when the brand started getting national marketing support.
“I remember influencing them to activate the women’s sports,” Tulloch said. “Why not? We were trying to do some sampling…just getting products in people’s hands, and women were a big part of it, so I remember leveraging a lot of the—back then—kind of overlooked women’s championship events.”
By the time Tulloch joined the US Olympic Committee in 2000, some brands were investing in women’s sports like figure skating, skiing, and track and field at the Olympic level, she said, and fan data showed that women were fans of the games. But interest wasn’t at the level it is today, she added.
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“A lot of the brand clients need data to make decisions, and the data is there now,” Tulloch said. “The growth is there, the trajectory is there. It’s not a flash-in-the-pan thing…Barriers sometimes are perceptions, and you combat those perceptions with the data.”
I love college
In 2013, after six years in the marketing department at MillerCoors, Tulloch joined Endeavor’s IMG Consulting—now known as 160over90—to work on its Allstate account, which is still her biggest focus today. Tulloch also advises on college sports strategy for brands like Marriott and Invesco, as well as for potential new clients when 160over90 is working on RFPs, she said.
Younger sports fans tend to appreciate authenticity from the brands that work with their favorite leagues, teams, and athletes, which is something that Tulloch brings to the table, said Karen Brodkin, co-head of WME Sports and EVP of content strategy and development at Endeavor.
“Trish translates her passion into championing women’s sports and collegiate sports overall for her clients and can be counted on to share her expertise across our network to ensure work is authentic,” she told Marketing Brew in an email.
Beyond that, Tulloch has also looked for ways to elevate women working in sports and sports marketing in her role, Brodkin told us. “She equally champions other women across 160over90 and Endeavor through formal and informal mentorship, helping to shape the next generation of female leaders,” Brodkin said.
College sports, and college football specifically, is a focal point for Allstate, according to Tulloch, as it’s long been for her. When she was at MillerCoors, she says she worked on the deal that brought Miller Lite and Coors Light into the world of college sports. Subsequently, Tulloch was an early mover in the NIL space. In 2021, Allstate pledged $1 million—split between 22 college football players and the nonprofits of their choice—shortly after the NCAA’s NIL rule went into effect.
This year, Tulloch is “doing a deep dive” into opportunities in women’s college sports for the brand, she said. (Last year, Allstate announced a multiyear deal with the Big 12 Conference to include women’s athletics, an expansion of a preexisting deal.)
“I’m really excited about the future of college sports, really excited about the future of women’s college sports, and really excited about the opportunity to help Allstate into that area,” she said. “A lot of brands that we’re working with, everybody’s looking at women's sports and what’s the right fit, and I think women’s college sports are right there in the mix.”
