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Thursday, February 27, 2025

The WTA and a Complete Unknown

Well, another season. Another new WTA marketing campaign. Guess how it went this time around.



Question: How difficult is it to sell the women's pro tennis tour as being a sports organization made up of athletes who play tennis, anyway? Apparently, excruciatingly so.

At some point, you'd think they'd just stop. But we're talking about the WTA, so there's no such luck. (Deep breath.) Thus, once more, into the breach we go.

After a multi-year period during which, for financial expediency, it essentially abdicated its long-time role as a promoter/protector of women's rights, be it via the Peng Shuai capitulation or the joining in on the sportswashing efforts of Saudi Arabia amongst other things, the WTA debuted its "new" branding strategy on Thursday, and it in many ways seeks to position the tour and its athletes... as an inspiration and/or promoter/protector of women's rights and opportunities?

Heehee. Seriously, you can't make this stuff up.

Clearly, there is nothing that the women's tennis tour (WTA) is more afraid of than being seen as the home of women's tennis.



Some of the stand-alone posts released today about individual players are fine (see Donna Vekic below, at least the first half before it devolves into another CarlaTalk about inspiring kids), but it's nothing that isn't done on occasion elsewhere anyway, including on the WTA's own social media platforms, and often as part of a player's personal social media presence and off-court efforts.

Because everyone promotes the WTA better than the WTA promotes the WTA, don't you know.



But, hey, Paula Badosa is going to "turn pain into power," Iga Swiatek "has no limits" (just like tennis!) and "boundaries are made to be broken." Wow, the effort it took to come up with such original platitudes must have been exhausting.



Though the WTA's #1 asset is its players (and their fans, at least the "sane" ones), the tour's marketing strategy only utilizes them after seemingly employing something along the lines of an Elon Musk mass email to all tour players, telling them to "list all the people you've inspired over the past week, and how you did so," with a response expected by 6 p.m. the following Monday. (I guess Aryna Sabalenka, the tour's #1 player, didn't respond since she wasn't even included in the initial rebrand video nor on any of the first "attempts" to sell it.)

Seriously, this "we're-bigger-than-tennis" focus is so wrongheaded and the "players-as-models" promotional efforts are by now more than a bit repetitive. These are virtual carbon copies of the other most recent marketing failures the tour has thrown up and out in recent years.

Years ago, the tour saw its only option for promotion being to dress up the players for pretty photos (they were nice, but how many times can you do it?), and then the move was to try to sell an inflated sense of the tour's self-importance on the world stage.

#RallytheWorld officially merges the two in the ultimate act of flat-out surrender, as it pretty much signals that the tour has no interest in promoting the *tennis* aspect of the Women's Tennis Association, nor the *women's* part of the name when it comes to promoting its athletes as, you know, *athletes* and the bread-and-butter of the endeavor (the game and *competition* -- this is still a *sport*, right?), and instead continues to try to center its individuals as leaders for social change and/or activists and inspirations who just happen to pick up a racket on occasion on their way to the big stage. You know, the same stage where they're going to change the world.

And, maybe, try to win a few tennis matches and titles, too? I guess.

(Shakes head.)



Oh, and the color change (from purple, with a long tie-in to the tour, to a weirdly electric shade of green -- reminiscent of the recent "louder, brighter" BJK Cup rebranding) is strange, and the logo is a big downgrade, as well... but I'm sure some "marketing analysis" says that it appeals to a wider variety of people since it doesn't focus on, you know, the *tennis* aspect of the organization. So what if it looks like some business that is *also* called the "WTA" but *isn't* the pro tennis tour. Meanwhile, calls for improvement to WTA TV, the ease of access when it comes to viewing/tracking the sport (i.e. the website, and/or more creative social media practices) and even the simple act of selling merchandise go unaswereed as of now. There is supposed to be a new website design in April (are you waiting with bated breath?).

As I've said before, as far as the logo, the WTA could take the NBA route (using an actual player, Jerry West, as inspiration) and make its logo newsworthy. Say, something like...



Just a notion. That's Magda Linette on the left, Serena (of course) in the upper right, with Anastasia Zakharova and Sharapova (in a former logo-like image) below, with an old WTA logo to the left.

As usual, the tournaments are better at using iconic (sort of) images of players to promote the sport without even having to use the player's name. Just this week:



Of course, in the WTA introduction article about the tour's "creative reinvention" (snicker) the new logo is compared favorably to those of the Nike swoosh and that of Apple and Netflix.

Now, don't laugh. Really... they pretty much do just that.

According to the article (filled with the sort of marketing gobbledygook often used to try to explain all the so-called thought that went into such things, though it mostly just comes off as a word salad designed to put people into a trance so they don't realize how awful everything is):

"The reality is, even the most powerful logos in the world cannot tell you what the brand is," said Sarah Swanson, Chief Brand Officer for WTA Ventures. "What infuses those brands with meaning is the marketing, the PR and the storytelling around the logo."

All of which the WTA is so good at, of course. (Excuse me while I chuckle at the thought.) And, also, I'm pretty sure that Nike and Apple's rise had a lot to do with the products, as well as some unique marketing aspects such as the entertaining Michael Jordan shoe campaigns, and the various, effective advertising slogans tied to the release of new tech-product lines (and Steve Jobs personally).

Swanson is touted for her "marketing chops" from her time with the NFL, the #1 sports league in the U.S.... but one which barely promotes itself in the States because it doesn't have to. The NFL's only real branding strategy involves spreading the game globally to *other* countries, with games in places like the U.K., Spain, Brazil, Germany and (soon) Australia. But the WTA is *already* a global brand, and any marketing strategy needs to involve *something else* to stand out from the crowd. Talking about "spreading the game" and "what makes (so and so) tick" doesn't cut it.

Swanson also notes the rise of the WNBA and women's basketball with the recent arrival of Caitlin Clark, but fails to acknowledge that Clark's impact (in college and the pros) was always based on her athletic excellence and the excitement that she and her fellow players bring to the court, not the eye-rolling notion of "what matters to her (or Angel Reese, or others) most." Fact is, the growth of women's basketball only highlights how badly women's tennis has fumbled its many advantages and opportunities for its own growth over the years.

Swanson talks of the personalized videos of WTA players, the "true brand ambassadors," as if the idea is the result of a a true brainstorm, though it's precisely the same thing the tour did in its last two marketing pushes that died out within weeks (if they lasted that long). The videos released on Day 1 were preoccupied with the usual "inspiring the next generation," I play for (whatever) notions that previously bored everyone to tears.

Colors and images aside, the tour just refuses to lean into the entertainment aspect of the sport, the fun of competition, the unique personalities (aside from who they inspire), the rivalries, the multi-generational mix, the patented, overall "craziness" (IYKYK) of women's tennis, or to do anything "out of the box" in the slightest. All that is what sets the sport apart and engenders such loyalty from fans, and could begin to create new ones by giving newer "outsiders" a reason to pay attention.

But #RallytheWorld is another big, long yawn. All they'd have to do is slap the slogan "Hey, It's the WTA" on everything and it'd be an improvement.

No one is watching women's tennis because "they want to bring (insert high-minded ideal here) to the world." This endless stream of new marketing campaigns every 2-3 years always tries to position the WTA as something "greater," "bigger" and more "important" than just a sports organization. If you have to constantly remind everyone of that... then maybe you're just not that at all.

The WTA was born out of a higher ideal 50 years ago by the Original 9, but now it's a business, and every move the tour has made in recent years have been nods to that reality. And there's nothing *wrong* with it, as long as the tour doesn't continue to try to act as if that's not the case. Meanwhile, while trying to pat itself on the back it continues to turn that same back on promoting *anything* entertaining when it tries to market itself.

Being the "most interesting tour" in the world is a good thing, but I guess the WTA's Powers That Be aren't secure enough in that fact to push the #1 selling point of the tour/sport. Still, Swanson calls the WTA a "confident brand." Sure. Sure it is.

Truth is, individual players *are* inspiring and go about taking such initiative with their "personal brand" (or are led to due to real-world realities, ala in 2020 and with the Ukraine war). But the WTA tour is not that. It's a sports organization that desires to operate in the black, as it has made abundantly made clear in recent years. A marketing strategy that tries to have it both ways is laughable in 2025.

Whomever is to "blame" for another marketing miscue, this makes three consecutive "different" campaigns in a short period of time that all erred in exactly the same ways. It's pretty clear that the tour's marching orders must be to come up with something that positions the WTA as being "about more than tennis" and the players not so much as female athletes who are the best in the world at what they do but as being "more" than just sports figures and to focus on how they inspire new generations, yada yada yada. (Sure, Jan.)

I mean, how many different ways are there to do that? Just one really, and it's dreadfully boring. And no logo and/or color changes can hide that fact.

So it's no shock that we've got yet another uncreative, dead-on-arrival marketing campaign that'll be forgotten and discarded within a week or two, but here we are. Yet another lost opportunity.

Welcome to the crowded room, #RallytheWorld. #FortheGame and #ItTakes say hi.




All for now.





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[February 27, 2025]


A tip-in to this. In 2022, when the Washington Commanders finally unveiled their "rebrand" after *two years* of "research," the press releases were similarly wordy, dizzying mash-ups of phrases that tried to display how smart the "creative team" were and how so much thought had gone into all the changes.

But any "normal person" looked at the whole mess for five seconds and said, "That looks like s***." And it did. "Did you just come up with all this yesterday?" It sure looked like it.

That's how I feel about this re-hash of all the other poor WTA campaigns over the past 5-6 years.


[March 2, 2025]


Meanwhile, it all started with this rather awkward "hype video" (and only got worse from there)...



I've already done a post where I highlighted the latest (the third since 2019!) rippin' disaster of a new WTA marketing campaign/rebrand here. But that doesn't mean a few more dips into the proverbial pool can't be taken.

As noted in the other post, this latest in the endless streams of "rebrands" and failed publicity pushes won't likely do any damage, but how many times can opportunities to "gain ground" be squandered before it actually does.

Thing is, at this point, it's difficult to tell what the aim is of these constant WTA rebrands and/or "marketing campaigns," because they never seem to be about selling or promoting the sport, the tour, or its players in any way that will attract new fans or re-excite longtime ones. And shouldn't that be the goal, since we are talking about an organization whose product is a sport, not a shoe or clothing line? I mean, if not, then why not?

And, you know, what are they even doing then?

Some have pointed out that one of the original videos in this campaign used "feet and inches" in regards to court dimensions as a sign that the WTA is "U.S.-centric." Well, this rebrand *was* apparently overseen by someone who previously worked for the NFL's marketing wing, and the tour's corporate heardquarters *are* in Florida, so that *would* make sense.

But if this campaign and changes are designed to garner more U.S. viewers and business, then it's an even worse effort than it would otherwise be, since none of this will make even a ping of a dent in the U.S. sports environment, even while there have been so many gains by other women's sports (i.e. basketball, soccer, golf, gymnastics, etc.) in the States in recent years, some of which were even mentioned in the introductary article about the WTA's "creative reinvention" on the WTA website.

The WTA has likely already missed its window for returning the game to even something *close* to its former standing in the U.S. just in regards to coverage and attention when it comes to *women's* sports, let alone aspiring for anything more. As interest in women's athletics has blown up in the U.S., the WTA has been passed by multiple times over by various leagues and associations while the tennis tour has continually squandered the head start that it had in the name recognition arena, fumbling through inaction and wrongheaded decisions the many across-the-board advantages that it once enjoyed.

Additionally, a "rebranding" (rehashing, really) that is centered around social media "signals" and stylistic alterations on the tour's website really doesn't have anything to do with attracting more and/or bigger business partners, right? That sort of push isn't really aimed at "bigger" targets, but instead potential fans and (if they're lucky) media coverage based on those changes, correct? So how does any aspect of the current/new/old strategy address *those* areas in any sort of way? I can't see a single one.

Most of the attention it's gotten has come via criticism -- from all directions -- about how poor the whole thing is.





(Maybe the WTA needs its own sane version of DOGE if this is what the tour is wasting its money on.)

Three different almost identical attempts since 2019 have only seemed to preach cliched ideals such as "bravery," "inspiration," or variations on whatever buzz words were used the *last* time as the rebrand ties (again) to position the tour in its longtime (but no more) role as being a "social activist" and/or aspirational organization even as its own recent business decisions have played against such a moniker having even a tiny bit of validity.

No one is going to start following the WTA because the WTA tells them that others are inspired by the players, they're going to want to pay attention because *they* want to be inspired by -- or at least *entertained* due to the competition and personal stakes involved that whirl around -- those players.

Individual players still bear that sort of "more than a player" branding, and the ones that do (Svitolina, Keys, Gauff, Jabeur and others) have done a fine job for themselves on their own. Leave them to their own devices, while you (the WTA) worry about promoting the *sport* itself, hoping to reach areas that normally turn a blind eye. Shining a light on the players, naturally, would play a big part in that. But the WTA's campaigns never highlight the players as athletes and competitors striving for great personal accomplishments, while creating entertaining moments -- some brilliant, some disappointing, some crazy -- that can be enjoyed by all.

The tone of these things is always along the lines of, "women's tennis isn't what you think," then goes about presenting the most basic, boring and pretentious version of what the tour seems to think would be the "most acceptable" version of the WTA in the most areas of the world, nevermind that hardly any of those areas will ever see any of it.

As it is, the latest repetitive campaign itself does no lasting damage. But then there's the "Tennis, There's No Tennis Being Played Around Here" logo change.

I mean, when even Kiki can see it...



So, is this the logo for the Women's Tennis Association, or the Western Textile Alliance? You'd really never know. Well, I mean, unless you're in on the "coy" touches pointed out by Sarah Swanson, Chief Brand Officer for WTA Ventures, who notes that the green rectangle acts as "the portions of a (tennis) court" and the little slash under the "A" gives "the hint of a bouncing ball." Umm, allll right.



Of course, the key to understanding the logo is to recognize that there is nothing that the women's tennis tour (WTA) is more afraid of than being seen as the home of women's tennis. It hurts efforts to try to do business within countries and cultures who don't want their women and girls playing sports, don't you know.

Meanwhile, just to give some examples of the trio of cut-and-paste campaigns -- from #ItTakes to #FortheGame to #RallytheWorld -- here are some semi-random examples of posts from each one, with the only real difference being the lamely contrived hashtags and different colors and/or logos. One from each...



And the "new" versions...



Other than the styling, there's really no difference.

And let's not even get into the lack of identification of the players involved in some of the involved posts, like this one...



What nation? And who is she? It's Alex Eala (PHI), but she's hardly a familiar face to most... and the majority wouldn't know her if they missed the post that immediately preceded this one on the WTA's social media that included a brief video.

Rinse. Wash. Repeat. The last two campaigns died out within a few weeks, and this one will do so, as well. Money down the drain. It's more than a little bit offensive when so many people ask and/or wish for the best for or from something/someone (in this case, the WTA), and those on the inside in charge of doing things to make that happen don't really seem to care, or worse, seem to only display varying levels of incompetance when they "try," even while seemingly expecting to be lauded for the effort.

(If the WTA was the White House, would this be where we're all asked, "Where's the gratitude? Have you said thank you once?")

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When the WTA was heatedly trying to hype this latest "new era" (really just another attempt at repeating the last one, which was an attempt to repeat the one before that) early last week before the "big announcement" on Thursday, it caused me to remember the excitement that immediately revolved around another tennis campaign just last year.

Remember this...?



I talked about it here just over a year ago.

Thing is, the ATP never really followed up the initial buzz. It never much became a *campaign* and was just a one-off that went viral for a day or so, had a few posts in March/April (even after they'd gone to the trouble of creating fake IG accounts for the "characters" in the ATP story), and then it all just withered away. There was no WTA sequel, which so many players had asked for. And rather than build an identity out of a great idea, using short spots all year along, the whole thing was forgetten in the spring.

I thought at the time that it was weird to drop that long video all at once, unless there were going to be additional ads later in the year. They easily could have edited that piece into many smaller ones and used it all year long, placing ads during tennis coverage (on Tennis Channel, Eurosport, during majors, etc.) ala the old ESPN SportsCenter ads that I used as an example of the tone for one of my "fake marketing campaigns" for the WTA a while back.

So, even when one of the pro tennis tours manages to get creative and stumble onto a great idea, they lack the will to take advantage of the opportunity (even when the players involved seemed really into it, and others wanted part of the action).

It sort of feels like after the creatives were behind this idea, the ATP went with it, but only until *someone* with decision-making power "didn't get" the tone and potential of the campaign, and the plug was pulled because, I don't know, maybe someone got antsy that the "story" aspect of the whole thing might make some think that the actual results on tour were preordained (i.e. fixed). Just a thought.




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RELATED POSTS:
"They Got the Beat: The Birth of a Fake WTA Marketing Campaign" (2019)

"Simply Irresistible: (Another) Birth of a Fake WTA Marketing Campaign" (2021)

"Credit Where Credit is Due (aka Kudos, ATP)" (2024)
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