Broadcasting live from Cannes Lions 2025, CMA CEO Alison Simpson discusses Bob Park's (Chief Brand Officer for GE, Cafe, Monogram and Haier Appliances in Canada) bold decision to increase sponsorship of Canada Soccer amid multiple scandals. The condition? Complete equality for the women's soccer program. This purpose-driven stance delivered social change (equal pay for women's soccer) and business results (75% website traffic increase), taking GE's "good things for life" mantra further as "good things for everyone."

00:00:00 :01 - 00:00:10 :18
Presenter
Welcome to CMA Connect, Canada's marketing podcast with your host CMA CEO, Alison Simpson.

00:00:10 :20 - 00:00:13 :19
Video
We are announcing that we are building a women's professional soccer league in Canada. GE Appliances to supporting women's soccer, it's phenomenal. It changes women's
and girls' lives.

00:00:31 :15 - 00:01:01 :10
Bob 
Um, It still chokes me up. That thing, where we were faced with a real dilemma at GE. A number of the corporate partners of Canada Soccer, our governing, national soccer organization, had pulled out of sponsorship because of these, scandals and issues that were affecting the organization. But, and I had about a week to think about it.

00:01:01 :12 - 00:01:25 :02
Bob
And obviously, from a corporate standpoint, it would make the most sense to just simply, pull our funding. We always have clauses in our contract, that say, if this happens, you can pull out. But I thought about it and I thought, about, back to our purpose. And our purpose is really, as GE Appliances, we want to support the community.

00:01:25 :02 - 00:01:49 :13
Bob
We, our motto is "good things for life", and that means good things for everyone. How can we support Canada Soccer, which, soccer in Canada, the beautiful game in Canada and then pull out of backing financially the number one organization in the country. No matter how small it is, no matter what it is that you're doing, bring the change that you want to see in the world.

00:01:49 :15 - 00:01:56 :10
Bob
And after that, great things happen. Thank you very much. You.

00:01:56 :12 - 00:02:26 :23
Alison
In today's episode, we're diving into a story that is literally minutes ago, fresh on the stage from the prestigious Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. We're exploring how innovative brand partnerships are reshaping the landscape for brands and sport marketing in Canada, and also really driving social change and important differences in our community and in equity in this case. So I'm thrilled to be joined by Bob Park, Chief Brand Officer for GE, Cafe, Monogram and Haier Appliances in Canada.

00:02:27 :01 - 00:02:49 :00
Alison
Bob is in Cannes, where he presented as part of the Changemakers series, which has been a very inspiring session where marketers around the world that are renowned for driving important societal change and building brands and businesses have been invited to speak. And Bob, you did a phenomenal job. So thank you for representing Canada so well. 

Bob
Thank you. 

Alison
And now we're going to dive into some questions.

00:02:49 :00 - 00:03:10 :13
Alison
And he's going to share, what he shared in Cannes and answer some of our questions around it. So Bob, it's an absolute a pleasure to have you with me today. Why don't you start, by talking a bit about GE Appliances Canada entered into a multi-year partnership with Canada Soccer in 2022. Now you were surprised by a big, unexpected press issue.

00:03:10 :13 - 00:03:35 :14
Alison
And anytime you enter into a sponsorship, there's always potential that things will go awry. Yet when things went awry, you stayed through it and absolutely continue to have a partnership and evolved your approach. So it's a very inspiring story. The audience at Cannes were riveted, so I'd love you to share with our CMA Connect audience a bit about the sponsorship, what happened and why you continue to support Canada Soccer.

00:03:35 :15 - 00:04:02 :11
Bob
I think the first thing I have to do is, go back to, our thinking process or our thought process around, sponsoring soccer in the beginning. And really what it came down to is soccer is the most participated sport in the country. And the reason for that is the barriers to entry for sports like hockey, as an example, are, are it's very expensive to send, if you have any children in hockey.

00:04:02 :13 - 00:04:29 :03
Bob
It's an extreme, expense. Soccer is the one sport that, despite whatever your family's economic condition is, almost any family can afford to participate in. And a large percentage of of the kids and families participating in soccer are GE consumers either now or down the road. So that made a lot of sense. The other thing that we really liked about soccer is it's a very diverse sport. 

00:04:29 :03 - 00:04:50 :11
Bob
Worldwide, it is also the most participated sport in the world, and it's phenomenal how accepted it is. No matter what country you go, we're in France now, and, and it's called football here. And I was just talking to a couple of people getting off the stage of how much they loved the game. So Canada, believe it or not, the fastest growing sport is soccer.

00:04:50 :11 - 00:05:11 :01
Bob
More people are playing soccer than ever before. Our major league teams are getting much more attention, and our national team. So it was a kind of a no-brainer knowing that World Cup is coming next year in 2026. You know, we had decided in 2019, how do we, how do we leverage that? How do we how do we approach our consumer?

00:05:11 :01 - 00:05:45 :09
Bob
And it was to get involved with major league teams in Canada, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and finally, really the crown jewel was Canada Soccer because we wanted to support our national teams, both, men and women. And of course, all the all the, grassroots programs across the country. Unfortunately, what had happened was, a number of different scandals, of which, a lot of the sponsors for Canada Soccer, in fact, had pulled out and and found it to be, untenable to maintain a relationship.

00:05:45 :09 - 00:06:15 :20
Bob
And that was, you know, due to a few different, things that had happened. But probably the most prominent was, the women's soccer team going on strike, because of really unfair agreements or conditions as compared to the men's team. So an example of that was, they were having the 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia, and many of the women's players had to pay for their own plane tickets to go to the World Cup.

00:06:15 :22 - 00:06:25 :09
Bob
That's entirely unheard of for virtually any country, much less Canada, where obviously the men's team were fully funded.

00:06:25 :11 - 00:06:27 :03
Alison
And which team was performing significantly better?

00:06:27 :05 - 00:06:50 :12
Bob
Yeah, the the women's team was challenging. They'd won a gold medal. Definitely one of the top teams in the world. So it really didn't make a lot of sense. And, the women rightfully, protested it. They kept playing their games but they donned purple shirts and really made it public. So as a brand that damaged our brand significantly.

00:06:50 :18 - 00:07:14 :14
Bob
And any brand associated with Canada Soccer, because if you don't stand for that, it's going to do damage and you get social media inquiries and all, all types of questions around, why are you sponsoring this? Why is GE a part of, this terrible thing that is happening over at Canada Soccer? So I had about a week and I really thought about it.

00:07:14 :14 - 00:07:51 :06
Bob
And I had the opportunity because it is a clause in most, sponsorship contracts to actually withdraw. And big names had already withdrawn their support of Canada Soccer, which is, predominantly financial and significant amounts of support. We are one of the largest sponsors of Canada Soccer. So it was really a crossroads. And the one thing that really ran through my mind was that, if I withdraw support, I'm actually truly withdrawing support from both the men's, women's and grassroots programs.

00:07:51 :08 - 00:08:15 :20
Bob
And essentially what that does is, although I'm doing it in, I guess, protest of how they were treating the women's team, I'm, I'm completely dropping the funding as well. So that actually wasn't a winning situation for anybody. I thought and I thought about it. And finally we came up with the idea to write an open letter.

00:08:15 :21 - 00:08:39 :06
Bob
So we wrote an open letter, and we distributed that  across all, media, online, etc. and it got picked up by a number of different publications - sports, Globe and Mail, TSN, etc. and what the letter had said was the letter was, was from me. And what it said was, I'm actually going to, give more money to Canada Soccer, which was kind of odd.

00:08:39 :06 - 00:09:04 :02
Bob
I was going in the reverse direction. However, it came with a caveat, and the caveat was that that money was to go to specific programs that we agreed to and outlined, for example, trainers for the women's team, flights being paid for, etc., etc. It was all earmarked for the women's soccer program. That got me some calls.

00:09:04 :02 - 00:09:29 :12
Bob
It actually got me some calls from the CEO and Headquarters and they were wondering, what I was doing and, I explained it to them that, that this is what our brand stands for, and this is the only way to maintain our commitment and our purpose, but still show that GE does not accept inequity.

00:09 :