This article is the eighth in a series on women leaders in sports and sports marketing. Read the rest of the profile here and keep reading Marketing Brew for future profiles.
Marketing executive Trish Tulloch has loved college sports since before they were cool.
Now, between the astronomical rise of NCAA women's basketball and the proliferation of NIL contracts, some college athletes have become just as famous, if not more so, than the pros. (Looking at you, Caitlin Clark.) But Truzzi, a former Northwestern University field hockey player herself, has a brain for college athletics and sponsorships from her internship and graduate school days in the '90s. Ta.
“My common thread that I really enjoyed was working with brands to understand how sports and entertainment can achieve their marketing goals,” Tulloch told Marketing Brew. Ta. “All sports are one of my passions, but I truly love everything about college sports, even with the changes.”
Currently, Tulloch is vice president of 160over90, a cultural marketing agency owned by Endeavor, where he works across the agency's clients as more brands become interested in collegiate sports and partnering with athletes. He is one of the few college sports experts to do so.
Tulloch said when he was an undergraduate, he thought his dream sports job would be as an athletic trainer or team doctor. “She probably could have passed without organic chemistry,” she says.
Instead, after earning a bachelor's degree in business administration from Northwestern University, she interned in Yale University's marketing department, where she had her first experience working with sports sponsors. About a year later, she returned to school and she earned a master's degree in sports management and marketing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Tulloch's first full-time job was then an internship at IPG Sports agency Octagon, followed by an internship at Omnicom agency The Marketing Arm, where he worked on Pepsi's sponsorship of the NCAA Championship. A highlight of her two-and-a-half years there, she said, was when Pepsi started receiving national marketing support, she helped put the Women's Final Four mark on Aquafina packaging.
“I remember influencing them to revitalize women’s sports,” Tulloch said. “Why not? We were trying to sample…just get the product into people's hands, and women were a big part of that, so we had a women's championship that was kind of overlooked at the time. I remember taking advantage of many of the events.”
By 2000, when Tulloch joined the United States Olympic Committee, some brands were investing in women's sports such as figure skating, skiing and track and field at the Olympic level, and fan data showed that women were fans of the competitions. She said it had been shown that there was. But her interest wasn't at the level it is today, she added.
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“Many of our brand customers need data to make decisions, and that data already exists,” Tulloch said. “The growth is there, the trajectory is there. It doesn't just happen out of the blue… Sometimes the barrier is perception, and we use data to combat that perception.”
After six years in marketing at MillerCoors, Tulloch joined Endeavor's IMG Consulting (now known as 160over90) in 2013 to work on the Allstate account, which remains her primary focus. Ta. Tulloch also advises on college sports strategy for brands like Marriott and Invesco, as well as potential new clients for whom 160over90 is working on her RFP, she said.
Young sports fans tend to value the authenticity of brands that are affiliated with their favorite leagues, teams and athletes, and that's something Tulloch brings to the table, WME Sports Co-Responsibility said. said Karen Brodkin, vice president of content strategy and development. effort.
“Trish has translated that passion into advocating for women's sports and college sports as a whole for her clients, and shares her expertise across our network to ensure the work is authentic. “You can expect that,” she told Marketing Brew via email.
Beyond that, Brodkin said Tulloch has also looked for ways to elevate the status of women in sports and sports marketing. “Through her formal and informal mentorship, she equally advocates for 160over90 and other women at Endeavor and helps shape the next generation of women leaders,” Brodkin said.
Tulloch said college sports, especially college football, are a focus for Allstate, as they have been for her for many years. She says that while at MillerCoors, she worked on the deal that brought Miller Lite and Coors Lite into the world of college sports. Ms. Tulloch then became a pioneer in her NIL field. In 2021, shortly after the NCAA's NIL rules went into effect, Allstate committed to splitting $1 million between 22 college football players and the nonprofit organizations of their choice.
This year, Tulloch is “doing a deep dive” into the brand's women's college sports opportunities, she said. (Last year, Allstate announced a multi-year agreement with the Big 12 Conference that included women's track and field, an expansion of an existing agreement.)
“I’m really excited about the future of college sports, I’m really excited about the future of women’s college sports, and I’m really excited about the opportunity to support Allstate in that area,” she said. “A lot of the brands we work with, everyone is looking at women's sports and what's right for them, and I think women's college sports are definitely in that. .”
