Dive Brief:

• Degree, the personal care brand owned by Unilever, has launched a program aimed at getting more girls to play soccer, according to a press release.
• The program includes training modules and mentorship programs and is meant to help groups who traditionally face barriers access better exercise. It is supported by a partnership with two-time World Cup champion and Angel City forward Christen Press.
• The launch of Change the Field coincides with the final days of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, when interest in women’s soccer is at its highest. It builds off of Degree’s history of supporting women in sports and supports the company’s broader Breaking Limits program.

Dive Insight:

Degree is taking advantage of the buzz around women’s soccer to shore up a position in the women’s sports space while expanding its long-running activist-based advertising. The Change the Field program is the latest piece of Breaking Limits, to which the company has committed over $5 million in the past five years. The program was inspired by data that shows that, while the participation of girls of color has increased in soccer over the past 25 years, they drop out of the sport at twice the rate as girls who are White and live in the suburbs.

Soccer star Press will help launch the program, along with raising awareness of a free Girls Can module that gives teachers, coaches and community leaders the skills needed to ensure equal opportunities exist for girls in soccer and elsewhere. Degree is also working with Street Soccer USA to provide Los Angeles-based girls’ soccer teams with a day of training drills and games, along with remarks from Press.

“We’re committed to making soccer a more welcoming space for the next generation of players,” said Desi Okeke, director of Degree North America, in the press release. “As a brand committed to creating a world where everyone has the confidence to move more, the Degree Change the Field program is the epitome of that notion, calling on coaches and soccer communities across the U.S. to help create a world where girls everywhere feel seen, supported, and have the confidence to thrive on and off the field.”

Degree has long made sports inclusion a backbone of its marketing strategy. In 2022, the antiperspirant launched the “Metathon,” which it claimed to be the world’s first inclusive metaverse marathon. Previously, the brand teamed with college athletes, called out the fitness industry for its lack of support for people with disabilities and worked to close the gender “bracket gap” during March Madness.