Can the woman who made NFL gear appeal to women do the same for UFC?
Tracey Bleczinski has been credited with reinventing the way the National Football League (NFL) markets its women’s apparel to, well, women. The NFL had been focusing on its female fans, which account for 45% (or approximately 85 million) of NFL fans, with licenced products for over a decade, but largely with the “pink it and shrink it” strategy. In 2009 Bleczinski, the VP of consumer products, saw an opportunity to evolve the line to include more stylish products. To drive awareness, the NFL hosted pop up women’s boutiques inside NFL stadiums and in 2012 launched the “It’s My Team” ad campaign featuring big name football fans such as Condoleezza Rice, Serena Williams and Kym Johnson. In September, Bleczinski left the NFL to join Las Vegas-based UFC as its senior vice-president of consumer products. She chatted with Marketing about her past successes with the NFL and her plans for the female UFC fan.
Do you think you can repeat the success you had with the NFL?
I do. I think the strategy can apply to any business that’s viewed as male-dominated when the reality is there’s quite a few female fans. It’s reaching women where they spend their time, speaking to them in their language, letting them be a fan on their own terms and really inviting them in. And part of the challenge with the NFL that we were able to overcome—which is not the case right now with the UFC but we’re going to get there—the NFL had great products for women, they had products designed for women, built for women, however, the NFL female fans didn’t know the product existed and if they did know it existed they weren’t 100% sure where to get it. It was very much an awareness challenge that had to be overcome at the NFL, whereas here, we have the female fans we just don’t have the right product mix for them.
Can you give a few examples of products you think the female UFC fan would want?
It’s really about the basics right now. Just a depth and breadth of T-shirts and fleece and headwear, but it’s also making sure we have nice fabrications, that our logos are presented in a way that are fashionable and stylish that women would want to wear. When we look down the road there’s very much a big training aspect to this. You’re going to be hearing more and more from the UFC as it relates to UFC Fit, UFC Gyms. I think there’s a huge opportunity within that space. The interesting thing about the UFC is I can sit there and watch the fighters do their thing and say “Wow, I’d love to know how to train like that” and unlike a lot of professional sports it’s very transferable to someone who is just a spectator of a sport. So I can go out and train the way they do.
The NFL had been licensing women’s products for quite some time, why did they finally take off?
Women’s licensed products should not be merchandised and sold the same way men’s products should be. At the NFL a few years ago when kickoff was in New Orleans we said let’s open a women’s only pop-up shop and merchandise it and create an environment women want to shop in. For women, shopping is experiential. For men, it’s a bit more transactional. So the NFL created this environment that was very much like a women’s boutique, but it was all New Orleans Saints products. On opening day there were 150 people waiting in line. The pop up was open for a couple of months and exceeded all expectations. The next year the NFL started doing style lounges at stadiums. And again, it was experiential. It was set up just like a woman’s boutique—there were manicurists there doing team colour manicures, there was a DJ, there was a stylist on hand and then some of the little things… When women shop they want dressing rooms. When you go into a dressing room, how irritating is it that you don’t have a hook a mirror and a bench? You want those things in your dressing room. We built these style lounges down to the smallest detail because it’s how women like to shop.
Do you see marketing and advertising being a large part of the female-focused strategy?
Yes, it will be part of the strategy but there are some pieces that have to be built first before we get to that point. There’s some basic infrastructure. We need to bring on the right licensing partners. We’re going to look very much at the category captains, best in class licensees. At the moment the UFC does not have apparel licensees so we have to build that licensing matrix, so that’s step one and then we have to make sure we have the right products, get it placed at retail and then the marketing and advertising will come.
