SBJ Marketing: Manscaped goes global with UFC renewal – Sports Business Journal
Jargon and clichés are the entrenched highly transmissible viruses of business, so we’re in favor of anyone trying to eradicate them. Lake Superior State University’s annual list of words and phrases that should be banished includes the following time-worn utterances: “Wait, what?”; “No worries”; “At the end of the day”; “That being said”; “Circle back”; “Deep dive”; the ubiquitous, yet elusive “New normal”; “You’re on mute”; and “Supply chain.” I’m confident most businesses couldn’t function without those last two.
“Yesterday is a canceled check. Today is cash on the line. Tomorrow is a promissory note” — Pro Football Hall of Famer Hank Stram.
Manscaped’s exponential growth over the past five years into a $300 million brand has more to do with marketing the right product at the right time than anything else. UFC has been since 2019 Manscaped’s largest sponsorship. Thus, a new three-year renewal of an original two-year sponsorship for the UFC’s “Official Electric Trimmer” almost triples the initial sponsorship investment — a price in accordance with the growth of both property and brand.
Manscaped, which properties as prestigious as the Canadiens have granted the unusual designation of “official below-the-waist grooming partner,” is one of UFC’s biggest sponsorship success stories — whether you track increased revenue, building of brand equity or activation. “UFC has been phenomenal for us and allowed us to zero in on their core of young males, which are our core consumers,” said Founder and CEO Paul Tran.
Manscaped will keep in-ring branding, as well as move up to a global UFC partner
Now that Manscaped has grown enough to sell products offshore, the new deal expands those UFC rights from domestic to global. Other new sponsorship elements include “ownership” of the fourth and fifth rounds, via voiceover and logo integration to match Manscaped’s Lawn Mower 4.0 electric trimmer, and its yet-to-be-released Lawn Mower 5.0. There will also be additional custom content and further integration of UFC talent. Octagon branding will continue, of course.
“They created an industry and we helped,” said UFC VP/Global Partnerships Grant Norris-Jones, noting that the original sponsorship began with a cold-call pitch.” The hookup started with a six-figure digital/social partnership to support Manscaped’s efforts in the direct-to-consumer channel — which is still its largest — though Manscaped products are now sold in retailers as large as Amazon, Target and Macy’s. This deal is around 3x the previous pact, rising to low seven figures annually. Keep in mind: This is a category so new, there’s no consensus on what to call it, aside from “men’s grooming.”
Manscaped is also a corporate sponsor of RuPaul’s annual DragCon convention. Accordingly, Tran said his favorite post of the year was one that proclaimed Manscaped to be “the only brand that could sponsor drag queens and the UFC at the same time.” Said Tran: “I was so proud for all that said about our diversity and the markets we are reaching. … As we expand into things like lip balm, we feel the brand is very elastic and could work for anything under the men’s health heading,” he added.
Along with the UFC and a quartet of its fighters, Manscaped’s sports sponsorship portfolio now includes NFL and NHL teams. With the company scheduled to go public on NASDAQ in March, we’re wondering how much its appetite for sponsorships will grow.
UFC, one of the first sports out of the box after the COVID lockdown, has been on a roll of late with a 34% increase in sponsorship revenue since 2020. It’s still without some of what other properties would call basic categories, so there is a particular emphasis in 2022 in landing sponsorships within the QSR, automotive and insurance categories.
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