Throughout final yr’s Southwestern Athletic Convention (SWAC) media day, commissioner Charles McClelland and then-PepsiCo North America president of multicultural enterprise growth Derek Lewis had a chat in regards to the future.
Two years earlier than, PepsiCo had signed on because the SWAC’s fundamental beverage sponsor. The corporate dedicated to hiring a SWAC pupil athlete from every convention college after they’d graduated. It devoted 60 cents out of each greenback of its sponsorship to instructional alternatives for SWAC athletes.
It introduced water to Jackson, Mississippi, when the town’s largest water therapy facility failed and SWAC member Jackson State College and its surrounding group had been left dry.
“When PepsiCo got here in, they did some issues that, fairly frankly, had not been performed earlier than within the Southwestern Athletic Convention,” McClelland mentioned. “PepsiCo has actually put their priorities instantly into the Southwestern Athletic Convention, and it’s not simply lip service. … They’re actually altering and remodeling the lives of our pupil athletes.”
McClelland and Lewis talked about what an expanded partnership between PepsiCo and the SWAC may seem like, and this yr—once more, on the SWAC’s media day—it was unveiled. The brand new deal makes PepsiCo the first carbonated gentle drink, non-carbonated gentle drink, sports activities efficiency drink and ready-to-eat snack sponsor of the 12-school convention. PepsiCo is including Pepsi Zero Sugar, Gatorade, Starry, Rockstar and Mountain Dew, in addition to bringing Doritos, Tostitos and Ruffles into the SMAC combine.
“First, we had a three-year deal; it’s now a six-year deal,” mentioned Kent Montgomery, svp of trade relations and multicultural growth for PepsiCo, who stepped in when Lewis retired final yr. “Second, we’ve greater than doubled the funding that we put ahead in that deal … [which is] now, in totality for us, the biggest funding that we’ve made with the SWAC so far.”
Model advantages
McClelland mentioned he felt the primary SWAC/PepsiCo deal “initially legitimized the Southwestern Athletic Convention on this company house.”
“It gave us a associate that mentioned, ‘You might be as vital to us as our different conferences,’” he mentioned. “So once we had been in a position to go to the grocery store and see a giveaway at one of many main chains and it had Southwestern Athletic Convention on it, that’s what we’re speaking about. It’s not simply {dollars}—{dollars} are vital—nevertheless it was the legitimacy that PepsiCo dropped at the Southwestern Athletic Convention.”
The brand new deal takes it a step additional. Pepsi Zero Sugar, Gatorade, Doritos and Tostitos branding will now present up at SWAC occasions all through the soccer season. Starry, Gatorade and Ruffles will cowl basketball, with Gatorade additionally pitching in with Olympic sports activities. Rockstar and Mountain Dew will sponsor SWAC esports packages.
