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Caitlin Clark capped a record-breaking college basketball career this year by shattering marks during her WNBA rookie season—and she’s steadily scored points for State Farm and Disney throughout it all.
Now that Clark finally has some time off the court, the WNBA Rookie of the Year is putting in a few extra sports marketing minutes for a new 30-second ad with State Farm and Disney Advertising debuting during the latest NCAA women’s college basketball season. The “Rookie Move” spot places Clark alongside ESPN reporter Cassidy Hubbarth and Jake from State Farm as they try to help a young driver who’s destroyed a garage door.
“The latest spot allowed us to collaborate and invest in top talent [and] is also well timed to help generate as much buzz as possible for the women’s game, especially coming off a historic WNBA season and during an exciting NCAA women’s basketball season,” said Alyson Griffin, head of marketing at State Farm.
State Farm’s latest collaboration with Clark and Disney Advertising follows their “Full Court Press” docuseries that they created with Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions and launched just before the WNBA’s season-opening matchup. The series on ABC followed Clark, South Carolina star and WNBA first-round pick Kamilla Cardoso, and UCLA standout Kiki Rice through their 2023-24 college season and March Madness.
State Farm and DisneyCreativeWorks—which teamed up before on an ad built into the ESPN Chicago Bulls documentary “The Last Dance”—built the documentary’s players into a similar, Clio-award-winning campaign, ”Inner Baller,” that used the tone of the series to describe the value of State Farm and its partners see in reaching younger generations through women’s basketball stars.
“We’ve found leveraging endemic athlete talent, like Caitlin Clark or Sue Bird or broadcast talent like Cassidy Hubbarth or Charissa Thompson, in this platform authentically engages viewers and performs incredibly well,” Griffin said. “We find value in tapping into the power and reach of the State Farm plus ESPN audience combined to tell a broader story of how we’re showing up in sports and sports culture, which is a key component of our marketing strategy.”
The Clark Effect in action
During Clark’s first pro season, she scored the most points by a WNBA rookie (769), handed out the most assists by a rookie (337), and made the most three-pointers ever by a rookie (122). Throughout it all, women’s basketball viewership continued to explode.