How Rexona turned sports partnerships into marketing gold (and growth)

Rexona has had a very long relationship with sport and physical activity – it’s been part of the brand’s DNA pretty much since its inception.

Everything from how we communicate to how we test our products and formulate our technologies has body responsiveness at its heart. So, ensuring our products are pressure-tested under sporting environments or drawing relevance through sport just makes sense for us.

Rexona has had a dedicated sports partnership programme for the last ten years. It started with a clear business need. We were losing engagement with some consumers and realised our campaigns weren’t emotionally connecting with them. A really great way for us to connect more meaningfully was to tap into things they were passionate about – and football was our first move.

Since then, we’ve built strong associations with football – from grassroots programmes such as Rexona Breaking Limits that provide opportunities for young people to partnerships with English Premier League teams Manchester City and Chelsea FC, and international tournaments – plus other sports like cricket, F1, tennis and rugby. In more recent years we’ve been bringing that success into the female side of the brand, diversifying and representing what being active means to women and girls too.

We ensure that our partnerships and ambassadors come through in our core communications, and – in line with Unilever’s Desire at Scale strategy – we apply our SASSY approach (superior science, aesthetics, sensorials, shared by others and young spirited).

Understanding the intersection between our product story and the sports story is vital. We’ll always focus on what Rexona naturally stands for – superior efficacy and high performance – told through the story of relevant sporting passion points.

As Official Sponsors of the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023™, we had 100 days from contract signing to the tournament, so we had to turn around our campaigns in record time. We used it as an opportunity to experiment and were quite playful with the brand activation. We went big and wide with a campaign we called ‘We’re Just Warming Up’ and launched TikTok’s largest-ever sporting partnership, activated with Roblox, and had exclusive content co-created with players.

Our aim was to reach consumers where they already are with stories and campaigns that are relevant, engaging and memorable, and I’m delighted that as a result Rexona was in the top three brands that consumers associated with the tournament^[b].

Social-first marketing allows us to reach our audiences where they are. We piloted The Locker Room to make sure we didn’t miss a moment. It’s a 24/7 content generation hub purely focused on keeping Rexona relevant and visible during major sports events by amplifying our ambassadors’ voices, sharing fan POVs and collaborating with creators.

During the summer’s sporting events, the team created more than 570 pieces of content, which delivered over 251,000 engagements and 56.3 million impressions, boosting our average engagements year on year by 112%.

We also learned a lot from the approach and look forward to rolling this out further ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026™ next year.

Plans are well underway, and we’re excited at bringing Rexona to life at what is set to be the biggest single-sporting event to date. While millions of fans are expected to join the games in person, billions will also be tuning in, so our task is to ensure we bring Rexona to life in, at, around and away from the stadium. We have lots in the pipeline from fan-zones, talent and creator content, competitions and lots more – so keep an eye out!

Stay authentic to your brand and audience. Show up in spaces where your consumers are and focus on quality content that allows you to have a meaningful conversation that brings your brand to life. Stay clear on what makes natural sense for you and where you can add real value. It hasn’t let us down.