Forty years in the past, it was a giant deal when Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton grew to become the primary feminine athlete to be featured on the entrance of a Wheaties cereal field, a consumer-culture laurel reserved for the very best achievers in sports activities.

The Wheaties placement of right now is to be a part of a recurring nationwide promoting marketing campaign that’s identified for that includes the perfect and brightest in sports activities. This yr, the State Farm year-end advert marketing campaign contains Jonquel Jones, the 6-foot-6 ahead for the WNBA‘s New York Liberty who in October led the group to the primary championship in its 27-year historical past. She was named Finals MVP.

Jones seems within the cheeky spot that revolves round auto insurance coverage, a broken sports activities automotive, New York Liberty legend and ESPN commentator Rebecca Lobo and the group’s free-spirited mascot, Ellie the Elephant. And naturally, Jake from State Farm, the amiable insurance coverage rep in a pink polo shirt and tan khakis performed by actor Kevin Miles, makes an look within the spot dubbed “Large El.”

“It’s one thing that as a franchise, whether or not it’s a male or feminine sports activities franchise, you need in your model,” says Shana Stephenson, chief model officer for the Liberty. “You need to be on a nationwide platform. You need to have the ability to be in as many properties as doable, as a result of that’s the way you in the end develop your model.”

The spot marks Jones’ second outing in a State Farm advert, after 2022’s “Attain Something” spot, which got here on the heels of Jones being named the WNBA’s MVP in 2021, when she performed for the Connecticut Solar. This time round, the advert blitz comes after Jones has logged two high-octane seasons with the Liberty. In 2023, the group made it to the finals. In 2024, the Liberty introduced the league’s Tiffany-designed championship trophy and banner again to their residence stadium, Brooklyn’s Barclays Heart.

Jones enjoys the added recognition that comes with being on TV in a distinct context. The brighter highlight on WNBA gamers is sweet for the sport and for girls’s sports activities.

“It’s going to permit us to proceed to be in these areas the place our faces could be seen, the place we will proceed to develop the group and develop our personal private model,” says Jones, who hails from Freeport, Bahamas. She turns 31 on Jan. 5.

“I’m pleased that we will department out and never simply be athletes. We could be greater than that,” Jones says.

Madison Avenue agrees. Feminine athletes throughout the spectrum are in excessive demand for sponsorship offers.

“This newest collaboration with Disney Promoting combines their creativity and prime expertise with our shared dedication to ladies’s sports activities,” stated Kristyn Prepare dinner, chief company, gross sales & advertising officer for State Farm. “This spot is one other instance of how impactful and related ladies athletes are throughout sports activities and tradition.”

As 2024 involves a detailed, viewership, ticket gross sales and sponsor {dollars} are up nearly throughout the board for WNBA groups. The miracle season for girls’s school basketball in the course of the 2024 NCAA basketball event — the occasion that made Caitlin Clark a family identify for sports activities followers — led to record-setting viewership final spring. That momentum carried over as star gamers from school introduced their rivalries into the WNBA.

“We see extra sponsorship alternatives and extra progress when it comes to companions who need to put money into our group and put money into our gamers,” Stephenson says. “Simply the alternatives and the hyperlinks that we’ve seen for the reason that [Finals] win has been unimaginable.”

The prospect to characteristic the colourful, dance-happy Ellie the Elephant mascot within the advert can also be an enormous plus for the group. Ellie’s energetic strikes and sassy angle displays her the spirt of her hometown. She was born across the time the group moved from enjoying at Madison Sq. Backyard to Barclays Heart in 2021. That was two years after the group was acquired by investor Clara Wu Tsai from New York Knicks proprietor James Dolan. The burst of exercise across the Liberty has been thrilling, says Jones, who moved to the Empire State in 2023 after six seasons with the Connecticut Solar.

“In every single place we go, I’m good for a minimum of one individual in an institution realizing who I’m, having the ability to come as much as me and say, ‘Congratulations on an awesome season.’ The notoriety is there now. The visibility is there. And I feel that’s a testomony to the viewership of the league going up,” Jones says.

For Jones, one tangible results of the cash now flowing into ladies’s sports activities is the truth that that is the primary off season in years the place she hasn’t left the U.S. to play in an abroad ladies’s basketball league. This yr, she put sufficient cash within the financial institution to take the winter off. Jones and her older and youthful colleagues throughout the WNBA really feel pushed to make sure that 2024 isn’t a one-off however the begin of a steadily rising tide.

“That is prime time for folks to put money into ladies’s sports activities, and switch it from a pattern into a way of life,” Jones says. “So I’m simply very pleased to be part of it, to proceed to do my half to assist increase the sport up and elevate it. And I do know that sooner or later, this will probably be a giant turning level for girls’s basketball and girls’s sports activities.”

(Pictured prime: Jonquel Jones, Rebecca Lobo and Kevin Miles)