It wasn’t easy for the Washington Spirit to re-sign star forward Trinity Rodman heading into this year’s NWSL season.

Late last year, Rodman’s contract negotiations led to a back-and-forth over league salary caps, which had previously come under scrutiny after several USWNT stars left the NWSL to play overseas for massive transfer fees.

For Rodman and the Spirit, the story has a happy ending. In late December, the NWSL introduced a “high impact player” rule letting teams pay as much as $1 million over the salary cap for top athletes, which has been nicknamed “the Rodman rule” because of how it factored into the athlete’s contract negotiations with the Spirit and the league.

While the Rodman rule remains controversial, facing challenges from the league’s players’ union, the athlete’s decision to remain in DC has given the Spirit cause to celebrate—and celebrate they have. On February 2, the Spirit lit up DC with more than 100 bus-shelter and billboard ads touting Rodman and leveraging her international stardom in an effort to attract hometown fans. It was part brand-awareness campaign, part ticket promotion, and the effort drove a “substantial number” of sales for the Spirit’s home opener, according to Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer Kim Bolt.

“As we were working to re-sign Trinity, we always knew that we wanted it to be a big moment,” Bolt told Marketing Brew. “A lot of the storyline and momentum of the original announcement extended even beyond just women’s sports, or sports in general, and really had broader cultural, lifestyle, fashion reach…But what was missing was really, ‘How is this going to be a moment back home?’”

Continue reading here.—AM

The Super Bowl is a high-stakes gamble for attention.

For marketers, typical buy-in requires a media buy to the tune of at least $7 million, creative production costs, talent fees, and the faith that, in spite of the intense competition for 125 million viewers’ attention, your ad will stand out to make it all worth it.

Some, though, place their bets while circumventing the TV Super Bowl stage entirely.

“People are always looking for a bargain, and marketers fall into that category, too,” Allen Adamson, co-founder of brand consultancy Metaforce, told us. “‘Isn’t there a way to get the Super Bowl for less?’ You can get a piece of it for less. How small that piece is, and is it any good, is the question.”

How brands go about getting that bargain varies. Some opt for a regional ad buy in the hopes that doing so could generate some buzz, which media companies TBPN and 404 Media did, as well as drink brands like Garage Beer and Bum Energy, which also hosted an activation in that same market that it bought a spot, St. Joseph, Missouri.

Others sat out the broadcast entirely, but still worked with recognizable talent on social campaigns in the hope that they’d stand out on consumers’ smallest screens.

Read more here.—KM

The Washington State digital ad tax has been live for almost four months. Some marketers are still struggling to figure out compliance.

The law, which went into effect on Oct. 1, places a tax on “all digital and non-digital services related to the creation, preparation, production, or dissemination of advertisements,” with certain exceptions like billboard ads and radio broadcasts. Since then, in response, some marketers have scrambled to reallocate budgets to pay the tax while navigating new tax policies from companies they buy ads with.

“It has been chaotic,” Lindsey Lind, president of Seattle-based agency Vision Media, told Marketing Brew. “We knew this was coming. We planned for this…But we’re still seeing challenges in a couple of key areas on the client side.”

One issue with the tax, agency execs told us, has been its timing. Lind estimated that marketing budgets from clients in Washington State have taken a 10% hit since the law went into effect as clients late in the budget cycle moved money to cover the tax. Some of them hadn’t already planned the expense into their spending, she noted.

While Lind expects clients’ budgets to balance out in coming years, she said that media effectiveness has taken a temporary hit.

“Clients are seeing diminished effectiveness from their media” because of that reallocation, she told us.

Continue reading here.—JS

Real jobs shared through real communities. CollabWORK brings opportunities directly to Marketing Brew readers—no mass postings, no clutter, just roles worth seeing. Click here to view the full job board.

• Marketing Strategic Partner, Sports Sponsorships at FM
• Data Driven Marketing Analyst - Audience Design at Deluxe
• Global Product Manager Probiotics, Postbiotics and Bioactives at Kerry
• Senior Brand Manager at Henkel
• Director, Marketing Enablement at Warner Music Group

Stories we’re jealous of.

• Bloomberg wrote about Gen Z spending habits and why many are splurging on items to show off on social media.
• The New York Times wrote about how marketers are trying to manipulate AI chatbot source materials to present their companies in the best light.
• Adweek wrote that while AI tools don’t seem to be replacing marketing roles any time soon, the proliferation of the tools are “compressing timelines and raising the performance bar.”