Why would a feminine-care company sponsor a WNBA team?
Jazmyn Williams, director of brand marketing at feminine-care company The Honey Pot, wouldn’t blame anyone for asking. But after attending an Atlanta Dream game last season, she became convinced The Honey Pot should have a spot on the team’s sponsorship roster.
Brands like The Honey Pot, which just wrapped up its first season as the exclusive body-care partner of the Dream, aren’t typically associated with sports. But in the WNBA, The Honey Pot is one of many nontraditional sponsors that have flocked to the league in recent years, contributing to increasing partnership revenue for the league and its teams.
This season with the Dream marked The Honey Pot’s first sports sponsorship, which Williams said felt natural from the start. Discussions are underway about extending the agreement beyond this year, she said.
Sweeten the pot
It wasn’t the size of the Dream’s arena that caught Williams’s attention—it was the vibe in the stands, she said.
“It feels like you’re hanging out with all of your friends and your neighbors—very community-oriented, very inclusive,” Williams said. “I just thought, ‘Wow, The Honey Pot should be a part of this.’”
The Dream and The Honey Pot started to talk seriously about the possibility of a partnership during the offseason, according to Laila Brock, the team’s SVP of strategic partnerships and community impact. Since both organizations are based in Atlanta and share a mission to empower women and girls, teaming up just made sense, Williams said.
As part of the sponsorship, The Honey Pot got in-venue signage at the Dream’s arena, created collaborative social posts, and used the team’s logo alongside its own branding in places like its Walmart landing page, Williams said. Players were given access to The Honey Pot’s products through a display in the Dream’s locker room, and product samples were distributed to fans during games. During the Dream’s sold-out home game against the Indiana Fever at State Farm Arena last month, the brand also hosted influencers in a suite to “come get content and really amplify our partnership,” Williams said.
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The partnership itself is meant to amplify The Honey Pot’s reach and message, especially on social media, and is also aimed at driving product discovery, Williams said. Over the course of its first season with the Dream, The Honey Pot gave out close to 15,000 product samples at games, and has seen over half a million press impressions as a result of the partnership, Williams said, which she described as “huge for our brand.”
Stick together
All of the Dream’s partnerships include a community aspect, Brock said, and the team looks to “align ourselves with folks who understand the value of giving back.” Williams said the Dream’s roots in social justice—the team is named after Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech—was part of why she wanted to partner up in the first place.
“They wanted to make sure that they weren’t just showing up in our arena, but they were also showing up with us in the community,” Brock said.
The organizations have worked together on several community projects, including a back-to-school drive and a wellness summit for girls at the Atlanta-based HBCU Spelman College.
Brock said she hopes the Dream’s work with The Honey Pot will open the door for similar brands to get into sports, and she expects to see more nonendemic sports sponsors testing sponsorships in the space.
For its part, The Honey Pot doesn’t seem to have plans to back out of sports anytime soon.
“There’s certainly an appetite on both sides to continue to explore,” Williams said. “We feel like we’ve really just scratched the surface of what our brands can do together.”