Lilly’s women’s sports push gets assist from WNBA on Prime campaign

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The pharmaceutical company partnered with Amazon Ads for a spot starring basketball legend and WNBA on Prime analyst Candace Parker.

Lilly and Amazon Ads partnered on a campaign starring basketball legend Candace Parker that debuted during a WNBA on Prime doubleheader on July 30, per details shared with Marketing Dive. The campaign was made in close collaboration between Lilly and Amazon Ads’ creative strategists and sports-brand partnership team.

The new work follows Lilly’s “ Start How You Can ” campaign from May featuring WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark that was created with agency Wieden+Kennedy Portland. The Indiana-based pharmaceutical company is also the jersey patch sponsor of Clark’s Indiana Fever team. Taken together, the previous campaign and the new one created with Amazon Ads demonstrate how Lilly continues to advertise around an evolving women’s sports landscape of which Prime Video is part.

“Women's sports are at the center of culture, and conversations about health belong there too,” Lina Polimeni, senior vice president and consumer CMO at Lilly, said in a statement. “For 150 years, Lilly has broken through barriers, always pushing toward what comes next. That's the same grit that's made women's sports one of the most exciting stories in culture today, and it's exactly where we want to be — not just as a sponsor on the sidelines, but a partner invested in where the game is going.”

Lilly's deep work with Amazon, which involved not only marketing services, but also talent, shows how brands can try to break through with a storytelling-led approach to advertising on the platform. Mercedes-Benz USA previously worked with Amazon Ads on a similar campaign.

Lilly’s 30-second spot features Parker in a basketball practice facility and depicts the athlete in a variety of roles — including wife, mother, president, owner, hustler, winner, analyst and trailblazer — as she discusses the importance of her health, both on and off the court. Parker is also an analyst for Prime Video’s WNBA coverage and is set to be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame this month.

“We see that brands stand out more when they're leveraging our own talent to tell their stories during the live events,” said Amy McDevitt, head of sports partnerships at Amazon Ads. “It tells the viewer, ‘This brand gets me because they know I'm watching this content and they're delivering me a message using some of the same experts in their creative.’”

The campaign tries to communicate how Lilly, despite its 150 year-long legacy, still has ambitions for the future and connects that to the idea of Parker embracing different roles in her post-playing career, including as a part owner of the NWSL’s Angel City FC, president of Adidas Women’s Basketball and as an analyst on Prime Video. Lilly has been investing in women’s sports, including advertising within the WNBA and serving as the presenting sponsor of the National Women's Soccer League on Prime.

The WNBA has aired on Prime Video since 2021. The streamer and the league in 2024 signed an 11-year rights agreement that kicked off this season and gives Prime Video exclusive rights to stream 30 regular-season games each season. As with its other live sports, Amazon is applying Nielsen measurement to the WNBA and is working to test and learn with its partners as they dive deeper into women’s sports.

Prime Video for the first time this year has a full slate of shoulder programming — including pregame, halftime and post-game — for both WNBA and NWSL, and WNBA on Prime uses the same state-of-the-art studio as NBA on Prime . The heightened presentation puts women’s sports on the same playing field as men’s sports — an imperative as brand interest in women’s sports continues to grow.

Amazon Ads is nearly sold out of inventory for both WNBA and NWSL, McDevitt said, noting that advertisers are looking for ways to leverage social, partner with Amazon properties like Twitch and create content like the Lilly campaign.

“In certain cases, we're having to build incremental opportunities… so that we can answer the demand,” the executive explained. “Brands don't want to just run their commercials — they want to surround and be more organic in the sport, so we're trying to give them multiple ways to do that.”

Live sports on Prime Video in Q2 2026 helped boost Amazon’s advertising segment to $19.8 billion in revenue. Brands activating across multiple sports saw 2.3x higher unduplicated reach compared to single sport advertisers, and multisport viewers drove 12% higher spend and 17% more orders on Amazon, per an earnings call . Such multisport strategies whether spanning WNBA, NWSL or not, are a “winning formula,” according to McDevitt.

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Ten-figure acquisitions, new agency experiments and organizational changes are underway, but the real key may be relinquishing a sense of control.

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