PepsiCo marketing leader Jane Wakely talks sports partnerships as a growth opportunity

Business Insider

Jane Wakely, the global chief consumer and marketing officer at PepsiCo, talks about sports partnerships and how the company plans to get more young people into sports.

Transcript

00:00Women's football alone, one of the top five sports by 2030,

00:04Nielsen report that we've done in partnership with Nielsen Sport

00:07shows that there's going to be 800 million fans.

00:10That means it's an incredible growth opportunity.

00:18And if you can see her, you can be her in female sport.

00:22So putting women athletes at the front and centre of our brand activation is core.

00:26But we've also been looking at how do we play our role in fueling tomorrow, we call it.

00:32So we're committed to bringing two and a half million young people back into sport by 2030.

00:39And we have various programmes to do so.

00:41We've done a lot of research across the world.

00:44Our teams have tried to understand what are the barriers that stop young people joining in

00:51or they drop out of sports, particularly during their teenage.

00:54And actually, young girls drop out at twice the rate of boys.

00:57And we've found there's various barriers.

00:59There's the obvious ones, like access to facilities.

01:02Don't know if you saw our Gatorade drop the turf campaign,

01:05but that was an incredible one about finding space for people to play football in the megacities of India.

01:11Second barrier we're seeing is actually confidence, seeing role models that you can relate to.

01:17So in our Fuel Tomorrow programme, which is headed by Gatorade, the key one I'd like to share with you is our 5v5 programme,

01:26which is a tournament that enables young boys and young girls to play against each other.

01:32And then they play the final at the Champions League.

01:34It's an incredible opportunity, and it's not just giving access to sport.

01:39It's giving life coaching.

01:41It's giving nutrition coaching.

01:43And what we see is the people that enter this programme, the young people that enter this programme,

01:47some of them go on to be footballing megastars, of course, which is very exciting.

01:52But for all of them, what we see is the life-changing skills it gives you.

01:56And brands like Gatorade, we really believe as a brand in the life-changing power of sport.

02:04Women's sports are a big personal passion of mine.

02:07Now, at PepsiCo, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants, to be honest.

02:10We were the first to support the Women's UEFA Champions League.

02:15We have the FIFA Brazil World Cup in 2027.

02:20We have Formula One.

02:22We've just launched with Formula One Academy with Gatorade.

02:26And we were right there with the WNBA.

02:29We've done some super exciting activations this year.

02:31I don't know if you've seen the Pepsi Refresh the Game campaign with Leah Williamson, Alexis Patellis, etc.

02:40And Lauren James.

02:41It's really fun and in combination with icons like Beckham and Pele.

02:46And then, you know, we've got other activations such as the Layers Pub Crawl, which is up for a Cannes win this week, hopefully.

02:54Where again, Alexis was an incredible sport, you know, incredible fun with Thierry Henry and Messi,

03:01including the pubs of Barcelona and Miami.

03:05So we've put activation right at the heart.

03:08But I think, you know, when we think of our role in women's sport, we believe it is going to be one of the top five sports.

03:17In 18 minutes, a chance of each other on Poppy Hill.

03:18That's the number of people we think for.

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