The Untapped Strategy Dealerships Are Missing

Women influence more than 65 percent of vehicle purchase decisions in the United States and drive nearly 80 percent of automotive repair decisions. Female college athletes are generating engagement rates roughly 12 percent higher than their male counterparts and outperforming traditional influencers. These two forces, the women buying the cars and the women commanding authentic trust on social media, are operating in parallel, right in front of the automotive industry. And almost nobody has connected them.

Claire Calhoun has. As a marketing lecturer at Coastal Carolina University, a former national vice president at an automotive franchise company, and a researcher who has studied NIL partnerships from the classroom, the campus, and the kitchen table, Claire has built a case for why the intersection of female athletes and automotive marketing isn't just innovative, it's overdue. Her Breakout Session at the 2026 Women In Automotive Annual Conference, July 17–20 in Austin, TX "Driving Connection: How NIL Partnerships with Female Athletes Can Transform Automotive Marketing" is a practical roadmap for dealerships, vendors, and aftermarket businesses ready to stop marketing at their customers and start building trust with them.

The Buying Power the Industry Still Undervalues

The numbers aren't new. Women have been driving the majority of automotive purchasing decisions for years. What's new is the gap between that reality and the marketing strategies most automotive businesses are still running. The industry spends enormous budgets on advertising that talks to a broad audience while underinvesting in the relationships that really influence how women choose where to buy and where to service their vehicles.

Claire's marketing background, she holds a master's degree in advertising and spent years in agency work, consulting, and nonprofit leadership before entering automotive, gives her a clear-eyed view of this disconnect. She spent nearly seven years as the national vice president at Colors on Parade, an automotive franchise company with 350 locations, where she led marketing, sales, branding, and training. She's seen the industry from the inside. And she's seen what it's missing.

"We already know we're going to ask a friend," she said, describing how consumers are actually making purchasing decisions. "Marketing changed big time when it stopped being one-way communication." Claire is honest about the fact that she's not immune to it herself. She's a marketing professor with a master's in advertising, and she recently caught herself driving to TJ Maxx, not just once but three separate times to look for beaded bags she saw on YouTube; a bag she knows she will absolutely never carry, because she's been using the same mini backpack for years whether she's in a ball gown or shorts. If influence works on someone who studies it for a living, it works on everyone. The question is whether your business is on the right side of that equation.

What NIL Actually Is and Why It Matters Now

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, NIL stands for Name, Image, and Likeness, the NCAA policy that now allows college athletes to be compensated for their personal brand. Before NIL, college athletes couldn't accept money outside of their scholarships. Now they can partner with businesses, promote products, and build personal brands while they play.

Claire has watched NIL evolve from every angle. As a professor, she helped design training programs for Coastal Carolina athletes on how to build their brands and position themselves for partnerships. As a mother, she navigated the recruiting process with her son, a nationally ranked football kicker, and saw firsthand how inconsistent NIL programs are across schools. And as a marketing strategist, she recognized what most businesses haven't: NIL isn't just a sports story. It's a marketing channel, and one of the most accessible and underutilized ones available to local businesses.

Why Female Athletes Connect Differently

This is where Claire's research gets specific and where the opportunity sharpens for automotive.

Female athletes, particularly in secondary sports outside of football and men's basketball, tend to build their followings differently than their male counterparts. Their audiences are smaller but significantly more engaged. Their content is more relatable, more community-oriented, and more rooted in storytelling than celebrities. And critically, they're motivated. Many female athletes receive partial scholarships or none at all, and NIL income isn't a luxury, it's what keeps them from having to work a third job on top of school and sport.

"Women are more engaging," Claire said. "And most importantly, women are better storytellers." That combination, authentic voice, community trust, and genuine motivation to deliver value to a partner, creates something no traditional ad buy can replicate: a recommendation from someone your customer already trusts, in a community your business already serves.

There's a deeper resonance here for the WIA audience specifically. These athletes know what it means to work harder than their male counterparts for less recognition, to build credibility through performance rather than visibility, to be underestimated in spaces that weren't designed for them. Women in automotive know that experience intimately. Partnering with female athletes isn't just smart marketing. It's an investment in women who are navigating the same dynamics you are, and that alignment is something consumers can feel.

The engagement isn't theoretical. Claire will share case studies in her session showing automotive businesses that invested as little as a few thousand dollars in NIL partnerships with local female athletes and saw returns that dwarfed their traditional marketing spend, including one example with a roughly $3,900 investment that generated a 23 percent increase in foot traffic and an estimated 1,500 percent ROI.

The Myth That This Requires a Massive Budget

One of the biggest barriers Claire encounters is the assumption that NIL partnerships are expensive or only relevant for businesses near major Division I programs. Neither is true.

"People don't think about it," Claire said. "What if it's a really small school? There's a 4,000-student school that's been there for 100 years and it's very influential in the community. But does a dealership 20 minutes away think about reaching out to someone at that school?"

The answer, almost universally, is no. And that's the opportunity. These partnerships aren't six-figure sponsorship deals with star quarterbacks. They're $2,500 contracts with a volleyball player who has 4,000 engaged local followers, does social posts and meet-and-greet events at the dealership, and drives a loaner vehicle around a campus full of students who all need cars eventually. The investment is modest. The visibility is organic. And the trust is already built.

For dealerships and aftermarket businesses that have been pouring budget into traditional advertising with diminishing returns, the math is hard to argue with. As Claire puts it: if you sell one car from the partnership, you've already gotten your return.

Why This Is Bigger Than Marketing

Claire sees NIL partnerships as more than a promotional strategy. She sees them as a way to connect women across industries; female athletes, female consumers, and female automotive professionals, connected in a way that creates visibility and opportunity for them all.

A female athlete partnering with a dealership isn't just generating foot traffic. She's showing a generation of young women that the automotive industry is a place where their voice matters. A dealership investing in that partnership isn't just running a campaign. It's signaling its values, and today's buyers, particularly millennials and Gen Z, rank a company's values among their top purchasing considerations.

"How are you promoting your values in what you do every day?" Claire asks. For many businesses, the honest answer is: not well. NIL partnerships offer a way to change that; not through messaging, but through alignment. When a business partners with an athlete whose principles match its own, the storytelling happens naturally. The trust follows.

A Professor Who Learned to Teach in This Room

Claire's connection to Women In Automotive runs deeper than a speaking slot. This will be her third or fourth time presenting at the conference, and she credits WIA with shaping the professional she is today. Before she ever stood in front of a college classroom, she stood on the WIA stage; nervous, over-prepared, and crying while she built her first presentation. That experience gave her the confidence to walk into a room of 50 college students six times a day and keep them engaged.

She's also bringing two of her students to Austin on scholarships provided by WIA, young professionals who sold Timeshares last summer and want to build careers in luxury automotive. For Claire, that's the full circle: the conference that developed her as a leader is now developing the next generation of talent she's sending into the industry.

A Session for Anyone Ready to Rethink Influence

Claire designed her session for marketing managers, decision-makers, dealership leaders, aftermarket professionals, and anyone in automotive who controls a marketing budget and suspects there might be a better way to spend it. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how NIL works, real-world case studies with measurable results, and a step-by-step process for identifying and approaching potential athlete partners in their own communities.

This isn't theory. Claire plans to have attendees search databases during the session, identify schools near their businesses, and evaluate actual athletes they could partner with, so they leave not just with a concept, but with a name and a plan.

Here's the thing about opportunities that are hiding in plain sight: they don't stay hidden forever. NIL partnerships in automotive are still early enough that most businesses haven't explored them. The dealership 20 minutes down the road from you probably hasn't thought about the university campus between you. But once one business in your market locks in the strongest local athletes, builds those community relationships, and starts generating returns that make traditional ad buys look like money on fire, the window narrows for everyone else.

The future of marketing isn't about reaching more people. It's about being trusted by the right ones. And right now, some of the most trusted voices in your community are lacing up their cleats, posting from the locker room, and waiting for someone smart enough to ask them to be a partner.

Join Claire Calhoun at the 2026 Women In Automotive Annual Conference, July 17–20 in Austin, TX, for "Driving Connection: How NIL Partnerships with Female Athletes Can Transform Automotive Marketing." Register today, and get there before your competition does.