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KC Current
KC Current Podcast: Jocelyn Monroe
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Dani Welniak is joined by Kansas City Current Chief Marketing Officer Jocelyn Monroe to discuss the continued evolution of the Kansas City Current and the vision driving the club forward. Jocelyn also shares her journey and professional experience in the sports marketing world, how the KC Current has built a brand that reaches fans around the world, notable takeaways from the World Cup and the club's feature in Ted Lasso.
Alright, welcome to our third episode of the KC Current Podcast. I'm Danny Wilniak, your host, and here joining me is the Chief Marketing Officer of the Kansas City Current, and you know, everything else beyond, Jocelyn Monroe. Jocelyn, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. Of course, we are sitting in River's Edge just above the Missouri River right now in this third episode. I'm gonna start it off, you know, with a current kick. Jocelyn, explain to me who is Jocelyn, in your own words.
SPEAKER_00Hmm. Jocelyn is a girl from a small town in southern Georgia who found her Mary Tyler Moore moment in New York and LA and then landed in the Midwest. All around working in her favorite industry of sports. Okay, I like that.
SPEAKER_01Short, sweet, beautiful, very explanatory of who you are. Now, I just need to let everybody know as well that Jocelyn and I at some point are going to have our own podcast on the side. We've had this discussion. Our desks are directly across from each other in the training facility. So we actually do have our own podcast because we just talk across the desk all time.
SPEAKER_00So we just a podcast about mics. So welcome to our world with the microphone.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and I um continually steal her golden stapler. So that just know is her prized possession, in case you guys were wondering. Thank you. It is now officially out there. The world knows Jocelyn.
SPEAKER_00You gotta have something, gotta keep, gotta have something that you know reminds you every day. I've made it. I've got a golden stapler.
SPEAKER_01Well, speaking of making it, we'll go into our first segment and take a little bit of a journey back on your background and how you got here to the Kansas City Current. What um what drew you to Kansas City? What drew you to the current in particular?
SPEAKER_00So as I mentioned, I started my career. Well, I started my career in New York City and then went to LA. I've been in sports or around sports my whole career. And as I was looking for my next challenge about three years ago, this opportunity found me and I fell in love with the vision of what Chris and Angie Long and the Mahomes, Patrick and Brittany wanted to do in women's sports. It was something that I had not heard before. It was something that was out of the, I say out of the box, but it was they wanted to be leaders and innovators and moving women's sports forward. And I had just started to really work in women's sports with the lat in my last role and really started to understand the discrepancy and the disparity between men's sports and women's sports from a real deep level, the resources, the investment, you know, having your own building, what that actually meant. When I started here, I came on my interview. It was a day that Candace Parker, who is a world-renowned, celebrated athlete, announced that she had never had her own locker. And so that moment just stopped me in my track. She's won a championship at every level she's ever played. She's, you know, and this know that she never had a place where she could put her things, leave them there, turn a lock, and come back and they would be there the next day, the next week, whatever, really kind of put an exclamation point for me on when I came and I heard more about the vision and what they really wanted to achieve and do here, not just in Kansas City and not just for the Kansas City current, but for women's sports in general. I was like, I'm all in. If I have the opportunity to join this, I'm here.
SPEAKER_01So at what point did you also decide, like even before that, that you didn't just want to promote brands, you wanted to shape the idea of brands?
SPEAKER_00For me, I don't think there's a big difference in those two. I spent some time on the agency side, I came here from an agency, but if you're really doing an agency role well, you are a real partner for that brand and that brand team. So you are part of those conversations about how that brand gets developed, how that brand tells its story, how that brand presents and positions positions itself to the marketplace. And so it's not different to me, it's just a different angle at um working around and with brands. And so it for me was another evolution in my career on having a different perspective of being internal at a team, which was something I hadn't done in my career since the very beginning. And so coming into a team, coming into a young, fresh, new team, being able to be a part of those conversations where we are developing what the Kansas City Current and the Kansas City Current Organization and Current Landing and CPKC Stadium, what they will present to the world and what they will mean to the world and how that is perceived and how that story is told, was to me, it's all a part of just doing marketing well. Really being a great storyteller, which is what marketing is all about.
SPEAKER_01We love storytelling, which is also why we're here. Um make it some magic. And you talked about your team. You have just like one of the most creative, incredible teams I personally think in the world, obviously in the NWSL. Um, and you have to lead these phenomenal individuals on a daily basis, um, and also help create that brand. So maybe you can share with our listeners who's someone who's influenced your leadership style, and maybe, you know, how do you approach your leadership style every day in an environment like this?
SPEAKER_00So a person who was really influential on my leadership style, unfortunately is no longer with us, but she was a leader of mine in my career very early in college. I wasn't even in marketing at the time. I was just a college student working somewhere to um have a job doing college, but she was a leader of leaders, which I think I am. I have a to you mentioned, I have a great team. They are all leaders in their own right. They're incredibly talented, they're really committed to this brand. So it's not about a lot of teaching, it's more empowering and allowing and finding ways to help them bring their best potential and bring them best sales for it. And so she was really someone had who had surrounded herself with people like that, people that she knew their talent, she knew their skills, and her job every day was just to empower them and make sure they had the tools and resources to present their best work. And that's what I try to do every day, not to get in the way. I, you know, you have to have an you want to have a point of view and you want to share, and you want to make sure if there are places where you can help them develop, you're doing that. But it's also to get the best out of each person. And how do you, you know, lead someone who's already a leader and making sure that he or she has the opportunity to shine, grow, develop, bring new ideas. You don't want to be a wall to that, you want to be a door that opens up here, you know, to lead them to the next opportunity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And it's just been phenomenal what we've seen in the Casey Current grow and how the brand has grown. And we walk into work every day, and it's we want to be the best women's football club in the world.
SPEAKER_00We are.
SPEAKER_01And we are the best women's football club in the world, you know. We have a little swag to us. You said that in July. No big deal. Uh it's still here. The women's best club in the world is still here. Um, just in case anybody missed that marketing memo. Um, but to that point, like as we're walking in, we understand that that is a trickle-down effect of a vision that has been set. But also, how do you take a club in five, six years of its existence and you take it from a local and national club to now a global brand that it is becoming and is?
SPEAKER_00I think it starts with that vision of doing something that has never been done before. I mean, our leader Angie Long said it well, you can't unsee what we're doing here. And so when you're doing something that is the first across the world, the world has to pay attention. And so then when you deliver it in such with such excellence, they have to sit up and really pay attention. And so what we're doing with CPKC Stadium, our performance center, our training center, current landing, it's really delivering for women's sports at a level that people are kind of shocked sometimes. Um, when we hosted the World Cup and the never the Netherlands chose our facilities, it was really a moment where it was an exclamation point on we're not just building facilities that are built for women, but they're built for professional athletes to have the most incredible opportunity to bring their best selves to the pitch or the field of play every day. We've got the resources, we've got the opportunities for them to recover in the right ways, we are investing in them having the right nutrition. It's all the things that goes into professional athleticism and professional sports, whether male or female, and we've cut no corners in delivering that. And so I think people were a little surprised when they saw that it wasn't like, oh, it's this little stadium over here. And like, no, this is a state-of-the-art facility, right? You know, where our players have a beautiful locker room that they can leave things in, and it's their locker, and it's beautifully decored, and it's private, and it's special. And our facilities provide our fans when they come into CPKC Stadium a great experience every match. Our fans have made it the hardest place to play in the NWSL. And so that comes from really investing in it and making sure that it's up to a standard. And I think that's the piece that people can't look away from. It's not just here, but it's here and it's excellent for sure.
SPEAKER_01And I also think there was a survey that went around general managers uh a year ago, might have been a little over that. Yeah, ish. Um, and one of the general managers was quoted saying, Um, when I think of the Kansas City Current, it's like they vomit teal. And the entire city is covered in teal everywhere, wherever you go. When you show up in the airport, there's teal. When you go out to coffee shops, there's teal. Like this city truly embraces that, but that's also a tribute to you and your team. So when someone thinks of the Kansas City Current, is that how you want them to think of the KC Current, or what comes to your mind as you're building this brand or helping build this brand? I think it's one of the ways.
SPEAKER_00I mean, people remember and they buy with their eyes, and so if you're a visual person and our chill captures you and it it won't, it arrests you and it won't let you go, great. We love that. We that's one of the things we want you to remember. Yeah. If you come to CPKC Stadium and you have the best game of your life, you've never experienced soccer at that level and fandom at that level, and that's how you remember us, great. It's all in just intentional about making sure that when you experience the KC current and you experience CPKC Stadium, you have the best experience of your life with a brand, with a stadium, with a new um facility. We just want to make sure that you leave there with something that really sticks with you and you want to keep coming back. We're trying to build generational fans. We don't want you to come and be like, that was great, maybe, maybe I'll come again. We want it to arrest you and we want you to be like, I need to come back, I need to see that again, I need to have teal in my life, I need to wear teal to work. So we want you to really connect with our brand through our players, through our storytelling, through experiences at CPKC Stadium. So, yes, vomiting teal, I'm fine with that.
SPEAKER_01As part of the second segment, it's important to talk about building the brand off the pitch. You talked about being a storyteller, and I just I love that about you because it draws people in and it helps build the brand. So when you're having conversations with fans and supporters, how is that storytelling component so important to building a brand identity, drawing those fans in, and even telling the stories of the players?
SPEAKER_00I mean, people connect through stories. I I like to say everybody comes to sport, especially through a story.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Me, I came initially to it through watching baseball with my grandfather. Now, I'm not a huge baseball fan, but that turned the light on for me for watching sports and what sports could do, and watching him get excited in his chair and be so excited and yelling at the television. I was like, oh, this thing connects. And that was our moment together. So that was my moment of being introducing me to sport and drawing me into sport. And I think everybody kind of comes that way of I came through going, throwing the ball in the yard with my dad or going with my mom or going with my friends, and in especially in South Georgia where I'm from, Friday night lights is the thing. That's what you do. Yeah. If you're in high school or in middle school on a Friday night, you're going to the football game with your friends, and so it's a connector. And so when I talk to our fans, it's about how are they connecting around our games and how are they connecting around our brand, whether it's feeling seen and included when they come to our stadium around our cultural nights, um like Pride Night and celebration of black culture in Kansas City. So how are they feeling like I'm connecting to this brand because they see me and we are mutually connected through our love for Kansas City, but I also they also feel that they're connected to our players by understanding our players' stories. And so understanding more about someone like a Dabina or uh Timois who really had to go against their culture to really play the game that they love, but they found a way to make their dream come true. That's a story that a lot of people connect to, maybe not through sport, but through other, you know, industries, adversities. And so when you see that these incredible athletes that are on the pitch also have a story of triumph, and they but they had to go through something to get there, or they've had you know some kind of connection with the parent or a sister or a dog, even it just connects people more to our players and to our brand. Yeah, and so finding that human side and just really telling that and letting that be the connecting point because I think that's the real connection where people stay and they continue to come.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I think there's three big things I really want to talk to you about as we look forward, as we talk about that storytelling aspect of it. Um, Casey Current Studios is officially open. And it is a production and content and broadcast hub, and it lines up with the drop of this podcast. So for you in particular and your entire team, what does having something like that? A studio built for a women's team by a women's team, what does that mean for you? What's the gravity of that?
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's another exclamation point on us just leading the way. Like the Kansas City Current are always leading the way in that under the headline that women's sports and women's teams deserve all the same resources that a men's team might have at their disposal. And so for us as a team, getting a studio means that, you know, we are now able to produce all this amazing content on our terms, that are on our time. You know, we we love our agency partners, but it's now we can walk into a room and do our photo shoot whenever we can whenever we want to. And so it opens up opportunity for us to do more. Um, I talked earlier about my team and their potential. Now we have the opportunity to explore and tinker and figure out and go and test and try. And so that's when you find that that hidden nugget. That's when you are able to really pull back the layers of the onion and explore and say, what if we tried this? And we now have a space of our own to try those things. And it also sets us up to be able to better tell our player story because we now own the narrative, we own the opportunity to do that. And Studios gives us a framework by which we can now create our own content hub and we can tell all the stories we want to tell about our players. We can work with them to tell the layers of their story, how the as long as we want to tell them. And so that's just another connection point for us to really connect with fans, connect with the broader industry. Um, it gives us an opportunity to better deliver for our partners. When we think about content for partners, how do we do it in a way that's at the highest level? We now have all of those resources at our disposal, and it helps us, you know, keeps us on our toes, helps us be immensely creative and to create things that connect. We look forward to figuring out how to create something that's like a college game day that we can create, and you can come back to it in that cadence of every Saturday or Sunday or Wednesday or whenever we decide to make that moment, but then we can create and it can look the way we want it to look. It can speak about the things we wanted to speak about. We can tell the stories we want to tell that really connect with our fans and create that same kind of excitement and energy around women's sports that we have a place where we can tell our stories as well.
SPEAKER_01And speaking of storytelling in women's sports, we just got a chance to be a part of an incredible opportunity, being a part of the fourth season of Ted Lasso, having Jason Sadecas and the crew come here to utilize the Casey Current as part of the inspiration behind season four, filming at CPKC Stadium, and really that moment in the first episode where Keely looks over the match and is just awestruck and inspired. I feel like a lot of us had those moments throughout the past couple of years being inside CPKC Stadium, but as a chief marketing officer, seeing that on the big screen and being a part of that experience, what was maybe uh a fun story for you? Um and also, if you guys go back and rewatch episode one, Jocelyn is very prominently right behind Keely in one of those scenes. So she got she got her little film, her film debut, a little film time, eh?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I mean having Kansas City Current, CPKC Stadium um involved in this global entertainment property was a trem, uh just enormous pleasure, honor. It really will elevate our brand and continue to drive our brand across the globe. Um Jason's from here, yeah. So it made sense, but there are a lot of clubs he had the opportunity to go and work with. I mean, it's a like I said, it's a global property. I think anybody would have been happy to be a part of that. But he saw that what we're doing here was really what he wanted to capture, and it was really going to represent what he wanted to put on the big screen. He wanted to tell a story that's about an upstart team that's really gonna take the world by storm. And that is exactly what the Kansas City Current NCPKC Stadium has done. And so to have our story almost memorialized, if you will, you know, that hopefully this content lives on forever, it's just a tremendous, tremendous honor for our brand. And I think, you know, it'll it it will help in some ways legitimize the story they're telling because they'll have a real life experience to kind of pattern and think about and say, hey, this is how they're navigating that journey. And so um it speaks to also the respect he has for our owners and what they're doing and what we're building here as really a pull mark in the women's sports society in women's sports industry that we are someone that teams should be trying to really think about and emulate, and that's an honor, no question.
SPEAKER_01And thinking speaking of teams that need to think about us, the World Cup coming into town in Kansas City and having four men's teams, top-tier men's teams staying here in the area, but also the Netherlands choosing to utilize the Casey Current Training Facility for their base camp. Um, how much does that mean and how much does that reflect on building a brand and also on the Kansas City Current as a whole? Were there any experiences that you had during the process that you were like, okay, this is a pinch me, pinch me moment?
SPEAKER_00I mean, first having the Netherlands choose our facilities as one of four that were here in Kansas City, and choosing a women's facility. You know, people thought, well, are they choosing a facility that's not gonna be able to meet their needs? I think by all estimations, their their team and their coach have said we exceeded their expectations. Um beautiful grounds, beautiful facilities, facilities up to state their state-of-the-art standards, where they could come and train and feel very comfortable that they were going to be prepared when they went on the pitch. The other piece is the amount of just reach and scale that we, our brand saw just in partnering with them around the amazing content that happened around World Cup, whether it was the open training at our Riverside Stadium, or it was just, you know, their commentary following their training um path and us collaborating with them on that to on Ron Haywalk, which was, you know, 36,000 plus of Kansas Citians or Americans or citizens of the world coming together in Kansas City to celebrate the Netherlands in the way, or join them in their celebration in the way they celebrate a match. And so it was a moment, it was a pinch-me moment to be standing in, you know, this crowd of 36,000 other people and say our brand is in a way a part of this. Like they're here and they're staying. It's almost like having a guest at your home, having you know, a guest at your home. My guest at my home is, you know, on the biggest stage there is, and we had our leadership on the bus with them. And so to be really recognized as an important part of their journey here and them um really wanting us to participate in that was the coolest. It was it was the coolest moment of that. But then just again, the reach that our brand will get across. We saw new markets, um, earned media in new markets that we'd never touched this um during our regular season cycle. And so to have our brand now be talked about in, I think it was Germany, Brazil, India, markets that we don't necessarily reach week over week. And so this is just another um element that's gonna grow our brand globally.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the fingerprints that the World Cup, I think, left here in Kansas City is just as big as the impact that I think Kansas City left on a lot of the teams that came here and the stories that will be told from that. But as we wrap this up, I got some fun ones for you. We're gonna do a lightning round. Alright. If you're down, I'm down. Okay, cool. Well, you're gonna get to know Jocelyn real well here as we wrap things up. Coffee or tea? Tea. Okay, favorite match day tradition.
SPEAKER_00Standing in the West Sideline Club, it's kind of become our match day meet point. Kind of nobody said this is where we were gonna meet, but it just became the place where we all, like if you're not actively doing the job at the moment, this is just a place we come and we watch the match. So that tradition.
SPEAKER_01We unveiled uh CPKC Stadium in Legos, and Jocelyn made herself as well as Raven Jemison, and they put themselves in the stadium right there, which I thought was like perfect. So now I will like visually remember you as a little Lego human in that place in CPKC Stadium forever. Absolutely. Um okay, a woman leader who inspires you?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm inspired by the women I work with every day, you included, obviously Angie and her continued vision and pushing all of us forward. Um, I mean, when I think about the women in our office and in our organization, we all we all left a career, and I don't want to say left, but we transitioned from another role that was really probably a career trajectory position and saw the vision of this new upstart organization and said, no, I want to be a part of building that. So that's also definitely very something that's very inspir inspiring to me. But I'll go off sports for a moment, and there's a woman called Jenny Clark. She is a HR professional, and I found her actually on Instagram, and she just gives the best advice. It's just how to navigate the world and the work world, especially, and she's it's just so clear and actionable, and so she really inspires. I just I kind of go back to her when I do scroll a little bit and hear what she has to say.
SPEAKER_01That's good. Okay, I'll take that to heart as well. So I'll make sure that I am in on that. Uh, one word to describe Kansas City. Today, hot. Hey, you know what?
SPEAKER_00A lot of the World Cup teams said that too. So you know what? Yeah, you just gotta get used to it. In general, nice. People here are very, very nice. It it is um in the heart of the country, and people here are very welcoming. And um, a lot of I think people have come here from other places, and it's got a lot of um growing and evolving culture in the in the makers movement. So a lot of entrepreneurs and artisans and artists and and uh um chefs. I saw McCool was talking about chefs in the last episode. So a lot of that kind of culture is really here that was one thing that surprised me about Kansas City when I came here. Okay, the last one for you. Finish the sentence. The future of women's sports is right. Oh, right, it is growing so fast and in so many different directions. You were seeing new leagues, volleyball, softball, um, all of these sports are really just getting organized around, you know, a path to professionalism. And so it's just gonna be so much opportunity for young female athletes as well as young female professionals who want to work in sports to really continue to grow this industry and make it somewhere that's really really a part of the sports conversation.
SPEAKER_01Jocelyn, I love that. You inspire me every day. Thank you so much. It's just a blessing to be able to work with you. So thank you for taking the time to jump on this podcast, the Casey Current Podcast. But maybe you guys should watch out for a Jocelyn and Danny podcast coming soon. Hot tanks, left and right. No, I'm just kidding. Um, but seriously, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Casey Current would not be what it is without you. Episode four, just wait for it. Lauren Holiday Impact Award honoree. Izzy Rodriguez, as well as somebody from Early Start, is gonna join us. So you guys do not want to miss that one. It's gonna be great. So thank you so much for joining us on the Casey Current Podcast.