Panelists Champion Storytelling That Focuses on Athletes

Athletes, entrepreneurs, and marketing officers came together for a TIME100 Talks panel discussion in Cannes on Tuesday to discuss the importance of storytelling within global sports branding.

Scott Mager, the U.S. chief marketing officer at Deloitte, the sponsor of the event, works to find new and different ways to tell impactful stories.

“What we really try to do is work with sports organizations to create some stories of impact,” Mager told moderator Ayesha Javed, senior editor at TIME, when asked about the importance of athletes bringing their perspectives to the table. “We want to try to attach our brand to an athlete, so that athlete can help put us in the middle of a cultural moment.”

Mager noted Deloitte’s partnership with the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) that has spanned several years. 

“It’s important to us to demonstrate, both internally within our organization, that we want there to be more women executives,” he continued. “We think there’s a direct correlation between girls who play sports and women who become executives, which is why the WNBA is so important to us.”

Ashlyn Harris, a former goalkeeper for the USWNT and two-time FIFA Women’s World Cup champion, focuses her efforts on creative consulting and campaigning for equal pay across U.S. soccer.

After Harris retired from professional soccer, she served as global creative director of Gotham FC, where she helped elevate the club’s brand and business growth.

“We’re humans first, right? We have lives, we have identity outside of what we do,” said Harris, pointing to her own experience as a soccer player and mother. “I want to not only leave the game better than I found it, I want to leave the world better for my children, and how brands want to be at the forefront of that change matters to me.”

Positive changes and the marks they leave behind are key for Harris, a passionate advocate for social justice and equality.

“It matters to me as a mom of two young kids to make sure I’m showing up,” she added.

Jaylen Brown, who won the 2024 NBA World Championship with the Boston Celtics, has also driven change for athlete branding.

An advocate and entrepreneur, Brown’s leadership helped launch THINK450, an initiative designed to give basketball players more control over their image and branding. Through his 7uice Foundation, Brown is driving change to create opportunities, access, and equity for underserved communities.

For Brown, authenticity is key.

“For men’s sports, what I would like to see is a return to storytelling,” said Brown, who has noticed a change over the last 10-15 years with some brands shifting from organic storytelling to “metrics, bots, fake viral moments, clips, in order to meet a quota or come off as influential.”

He continued: “That’s why people feel like they’re not connected to the products anymore, they’re not connected to the brands anymore, because they replaced authenticity and storytelling with technology.”

Uzma Rawn Dowler, Major League Baseball’s Chief Marketing Officer & Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Partnerships, also values the importance of allowing athletes to bring their own stories to the table.

“For MLB, player storytelling is a very important initiative for us, from a marketing perspective,” said Dowler, who noted that younger athletes are “growing up on social media, so they’re coming in with a built-in audience, they’re almost creators and influencers in their own right.”

Dowler said that MLB helps athletes build up their brand both on and off the field.

“We want to take a look at the whole person,” said Dowler, when asked how MLB ensures that athletes’ stories are still personal while engaging with audiences. “We have a player engagement team internally at MLB, [so] that when athletes come in and players come in, we have them fill out a survey of ‘what are your actual interests?’”

“Whenever we bring on new partners for baseball, we always want them to lean in with our athletes, because it humanizes the partnership as well,” Dowler added. “It puts a face to the brand, and you can create authentic stories.”