Until there is equality, women will continue to fight, be vocal and stand up against gender discrimination. Yes, great strides have been made over the past couple of decades to make the workplace inclusive to women, and yes, there is still a magnitude of change that needs to occur in order to consider the playing field level for women in the workplace. Every day, more companies begin to implement and prioritize initiatives that support women.
Professional skateboarder and Wasserman athlete, Lacey Baker, competes at the 2019 X Games in Minneapolis. Baker’s presence with the agency’s new initiative, The Collective, is helping raise awareness for the sports landscape.
Wasserman Athlete ExchangeCompanies such as Wasserman, a global sports and entertainment agency, not only created a new division, The Collective, within the company to raise the visibility of women in sports, entertainment and culture, but have also been a change agent in the conversations taking place throughout the industry. The Collective delivers unique strategies, insights and ideas for talent, brands and properties focused on empowering and speaking to women. Additionally, The Collective serves as a resource for Wasserman, including its business and clients, so that projects or clients that reach women can be elevated by the combined expertise and experience of The Collective.
“It's something that we had been talking about in many different kind of ways, shapes and forms over the past year,” explains Thayer Lavielle, executive vice president of talent marketing and operations and The Collective. “It really germinated from the need internally to be more connected. We represent 150 to 200 athletes that are women, and we have two dozen plus agents that represent those women. We work with hundreds of brands, that market to women and we do a lot of that work. There was a point in time where we thought we should probably unify a lot of these conversations so that we can better serve each other as colleagues, but also inform and serve our clients.”
Thayer Lavielle, Executive Vice President, The Collective (left), Elizabeth Lindsey, President – Brands and Properties, Wasserman (right) at the 2019 Ladies Only Cocktail
2019 Getty ImagesInternally, it is a central hub for the company’s internal areas of business, such as a research and insights center. “Within that,” Lavielle continues, “we serve all the different divisions within the company with information, with leads, with materials, with connections, with whatever it is that can best help get people further down the road in terms of creating a different client activation. Externally, what it looks like, is looking around the industry and saying, ‘how can we, live in the sports entertainment ecosystem and be better citizens within the areas which we work?’”
Separately, the Wasserman Foundation, a private family foundation led by Casey Wasserman, has committed $1 million to fund charitable programs encouraging the growth and development of women in sports and entertainment. “We need to take all the aspects of our business,” states Elizabeth Lindsey, president of brands and properties at Wasserman, “put it together under a single focus under a single leader, share best practices, aggregate the information we have from across all the different divisions; then go to market with our effort, our time, this brand, and the foundation's money behind it.”
Two-time Olympic gold medal swimmer and Wasserman athlete, Simone Manuel, during a recent promotional photoshoot. Manuel is one of a number of the agency’s athletes lending their star power to a woman-focused initiative known as The Collective.
NikeIt is a time in history where women are realizing as consumers, and as people, that they have a voice and are radically unafraid to use it. Bloomberg stated that women drive 70-80% of all consumer purchasing through buying power and influence. Also, in 2018, women were estimated to control about $40 trillion in consumer spending. “When you have the interest in and support for female athletes in the sport,” Lindsey continues, “when you have marketers that are more balanced in terms of male and female and then you have this empowered consumer, it's the right time to do the right thing.”
Additionally, female athletes are advocates for the development of The Collective. “As women in sports,” comments Abby Wambach, an American retired soccer player, coach, two-time Olympic gold medalist and FIFA Women's World Cup champion, “we need all the advocates we can get. Throughout my career, Wasserman has been an important advocate for me from my playing days through retirement and beyond. The agency’s support of women that I have seen firsthand – from my own personal work to many of my teammates’ – is rare in our industry and I am excited to see how far we can go together now that a dedicated women-focused division, The Collective, has been established.”
“We're not looking to solve stereotypes,” Lavielle concludes. “What we're looking to do is understand how we actually get in there and work around those and help us make our partners smarter and our clients smarter in the business.”
2019-09-25 12:10:05Z
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylrobinson/2019/09/25/how-wasserman-is-raising-the-visibility-of-women-in-sports-entertainment-and-culture/
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