From May 2022 until the end of January 2023 we have been working together with Selena Babb to develop her Personal Brand. As a professional goalkeeper at AC Milan, Selena wanted to use her influence and increased social reach to create new sponsorship opportunities.
During this time we have defined her personal brand values, which were translated into her Instagram feed and stories, and we assister her in het hunt for sponsorships that fit her unique personal brand. In this blog, we share actions and results that were part of our strategy. On the bottom you will find a pdf, which contains a more graphic overview of the process.
Why did Selena choose our personal branding program?
Selena already had a good number of followers on her Instagram account. She wanted to use her influence to reach even more people and knew there were opportunities for sponsorships. However, personal branding and the time it would take to learn more about it were obstacles for her to fully take advantage of it.
Defining a unique identity
The first step was to identify Selena's unique identity. Who is she really? In today's world, you need to stand out and be your unique self to make a difference. Her personality and values are a very important part of this.
Her unique identity is the foundation of her personal branding strategy. By highlighting her personal characteristics and values, we created a unique identity around her name and communicated this in different ways to her followers.
Instagram story strategy
Together with Selena we developed an Instagram story strategy to increase her audience, gain interaction, and display her cause. We created two different story themes:
Wellness As a professional athlete, a healthy lifestyle and also mental struggles are important to share for Selena. With weekly stories about wellness, she highlights subjects like nutrition, mentality, game preparations, stretching and more.
Female Football Selena is a fighter for equal rights and equal opportunities, and she wanted to use her voice to raise awareness among her audience. By sharing informative content about women’s football, in a playful way, she forms part of the movement for equality in football.
By designing these stories in an interactive way, we expected that the engagement with her content would grow. A higher engagement and Selena using her voice to stand up for her personal values, made her more interesting for brands that share the same values. In partnership with these brands, she has and will have more power in fighting for her personal cause!
Instagram Live
In October, we organized an Instagram Live interview between Selena and Valenze. This interview was a great opportunity for Selena to share her story with her followers, interact with them and raise awareness about a very important topic for her: equal rights.
Sponsorship
The main objective for Selena was to create more sponsorship opportunities. That is why we created a sponsorship strategy based on her unique identity and values. During this process, we searched for connections between the Selena's brand and potential sponsors. This is why establishing the athlete's personal values are so important. It helps the player to qualify potential sponsors and how they could connect with her personal brand but it also helps to make and build a connection with them, especially when the shared values can create new opportunities for both sponsor and player.
With Selena, we created a sponsor shortlist and selected a few potential businesses that match with her personality and values, and could lead to an interesting partnership. We then searched for information about the organisations, so we could create sponsor profiles. These sponsor profiles helped us to approach these potential partners.
The result?
There were 3 different businesses that wanted to sponsor Selena while we were working with Selena.
Capelli Sports - is an international sportswear company with focus on the football market. They want to empower and unite people all over the world. Their goal to build equal and diverse playing fields where everyone can be themselves, matches Selena's equal rights value.
Robey Sportswear - a sportswear business from Rotterdam, Selena's birth city. It is a company with a winners mentality that strives for the best and with the mission to arm athletes with confidence to give it all. Something that aligns perfectly with Selena her fighting spirit and outspoken personality.
Vitakruid - a company selling health products and nutritional supplements. As a professional athlete, health and nutrition are very important for good performances. A healthy lifestyle is a very important value of Selena and the products of Vitakruid can help her in her day to day life.
Read more about the process and the results in the pdf below.