CEO’s love for swimming leads OneAmerica to sponsor USA team

Scott Davison, the CEO of Indianapolis-based OneAmerica Financial, isn’t shy about admitting it: “I have a swimming problem.”

And when he says “problem,” what he’s jokingly referring to is his lifelong love of the sport.

Davison swam competitively in high school and college, then moved into coaching. He still swims regularly—he has a two-lane, 25-yard pool in his backyard—and he’s undoubtedly one of the sport’s biggest local boosters.

“Everyone has a thing. That’s his thing,” said colleague Karin Sarratt, OneAmerica’s executive vice president.

Knowing this helps explain why USA Swimming is hosting its U.S. Olympic team trials in Indianapolis from June 15-23—and why you’ll be seeing OneAmerica’s name and logo a lot in connection with the event.

OneAmerica is USA Swimming’s largest financial sponsor. A six-year deal that began last year will carry the sponsorship through this summer’s Olympics in Paris and the 2028 games in Los Angeles.

Specific to next week’s swim trials, OneAmerica’s logo will be on display at various venues, including the Toyota Aqua Zone fan experience at the Indiana Convention Center, the Swim House hospitality center for event VIPs, and the main stage for live music during the nine-day event. OneAmerica also will advertise digitally on USA Swimming’s website and newsletters and in print in swimming trade magazines.

“They’re our biggest sponsor. They’re our biggest supporter. We couldn’t do this without them,” said Shana Ferguson, chief commercial officer at Colorado Springs, Colorado-based USA Swimming.

Davison and Sarratt are also co-chairs of the swim trials local organizing committee.

And OneAmerica is USA Swimming’s first patch sponsor for the organization’s national team kit. That means the 100 or so swimmers selected for the organization’s national team will have the OneAmerica logo on their T-shirts, jackets and other apparel that make up what’s commonly known as their “team kit.” The logo isn’t on the swimsuits, and it’s not allowed at the Olympics, Ferguson said, but it is part of the team kit when the U.S. national team and the national junior team swim in major international competitions.

Both Ferguson and Davison declined to say how much OneAmerica paid for its sponsorship.

Ken Ungar, president of Indianapolis-based sponsorship consulting firm Charge LLC, said estimating the cost of OneAmerica’s USA Swimming sponsorship is difficult because each deal is different and what is included can vary.

But basic rights fees for a national athletic governing body—a sponsor’s right to associate itself with the organization—usually go for the “mid six figures,” Ungar said.

CEO, swimming enthusiast

Davison joined a swim team in high school and again at Middlebury College, a Division III school in Vermont from which he graduated in 1986. He then launched his insurance career in Maine while also coaching high school swimming there.

Shortly after moving here in 2000 to take a job at OneAmerica, Davison recalled, he had a conversation with business and civic leader Jim Morris. Before Davison knew what had happened, Morris had drafted him into helping organize the 2004 FINA world swimming championships, which were to take place in Indianapolis.

“I talked about swimming, and he said, ‘Well, that settles it,’” Davison recalled. “And I said, ‘Settles what, Jim?’ and he goes, ‘Oh, well, you’re going to work with Dale Neuburger [then-president of the Indiana Sports Corp.] on the 2004 world championships.’”

That experience led to Davison’s involvement with the Indiana Sports Corp., where he later served as a board member.

When he became OneAmerica’s CEO in 2014, Davison said, he cut back his involvement with the Indiana Sports Corp. but pledged to be its “aquatics guy” as needed.

After Tim Hinchey became president of USA Swimming in 2017, Davison invited Hinchey to a get-acquainted dinner in Indianapolis. USA Swimming has held numerous national championship meets at the Indiana University Natatorium in Indianapolis, and Davison wanted to get to know the organization’s new leader.

That dinner, Davison said, developed into a friendship between the two, and at a subsequent meeting, Davison pitched Hinchey on bringing the 2024 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials to Indianapolis.

Indianapolis landed the trials, and Davison and Sarratt became co-chairs of the event’s local organizing committee.

Hinchey pitched Davison on the idea of OneAmerica becoming a USA Swimming sponsor. The deal was announced in late 2022, and the sponsorship began in 2023.

Sponsorship strategy

“He made me an offer at the right time at the right amount of investment,” Davison recalled. “… We’d been looking for a way to get some retail exposure.”

Historically, Davison said, OneAmerica has not done much consumer marketing. OneAmerica’s financial products, which include life insurance and annuities, are mostly sold through insurance agents. Direct sales to consumers represent only about 6% of OneAmerica’s revenue, he said.

In contrast, Davison said, companies offering car insurance and homeowners insurance do sell those products directly to consumers—and that’s why you typically see ads for some types of insurance but not others.

“You’re not going to see us getting a GEICO lizard—that just doesn’t help in our business,” Davison said.

But earlier this year, OneAmerica went through a rebranding that included a new logo with a slightly different company name. The company now brands itself as OneAmerica Financial rather than its former OneAmerica, in a play to clarify that it is a financial services company. (The full official name of the company, OneAmerica Financial Partners Inc., remains the same).

In conjunction with that rebranding, OneAmerica launched the first national advertising campaign in its 147-year history. That campaign, which began in Indianapolis before rolling out nationwide, includes broadcast and online advertising.

OneAmerica and USA Swimming say the sponsorship deal makes a lot of sense for both parties.

USA Swimming, the national governing body for the sport of swimming in the United States, has 400,000 members who participate with nearly 3,000 USA Swimming-sanctioned swim teams, which the sport refers to as swim clubs. The organization also sanctions 7,000 meets per year, including the swimming trials through which the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic team athletes are selected.

“The average household income of a USA Swimming member is about $176,000, so it’s really a nice market for us,” Davison said. “And we’re creating affinity with that group.”

As a U.S.-based company that does business only domestically, Davison said, OneAmerica also uses patriotism in its marketing. The company’s logo includes a flag (though not a U.S. flag), and its company colors are red and blue. These elements, Davison said, seem like a natural fit for an organization for American athletes.

For its part, USA Swimming also sees the sponsorship as a good fit.

Ferguson said the OneAmerica sponsorship gives USA Swimming’s 30,000 coaches access to retirement planning resources. “OneAmerica Financial has been great at offering online resources and online webinars and live education.”

Ungar, the sponsorship consultant, said sponsorship deals can actually be more effective than advertising at reaching potential customers. “With advertising, you feel like you’re being sold something—and people don’t like that.”

In contrast, he said, sponsoring an event gives sponsors a chance to build good feelings among people who attend that event. It’s a phenomenon called image transfer.

Consider the swim trials, Ungar said. “You’re there because you love swimming, you love the Olympic movement, you love the athletes,” he said. “And when you see the portfolio of sponsors that are supporting what you love, there’s this feeling of thankfulness—an alignment in values that says, ‘Wow, if OneAmerica is supporting swimming, and I love swimming, then I love OneAmerica.’”

Beyond the Olympic trials

OneAmerica is also supporting USA Swimming in other ways.

The two organizations have pledged a combined $1 million to support swimming programs at historically black colleges and universities, Ferguson said.

USA Swimming and the local Olympic swimming trials organizing committee are promoting a legacy project that aims to provide water safety training to 50,000 Hoosiers by the end of this year. That program began last year, and as of March, about 25,000 people had gone through the training. (See opposite page for more information.)

About 6,000 volunteers will be needed to serve various roles during the nine days of the swim trials, and hundreds of those volunteers will likely be OneAmerica employees, Davison said. “We’re going to unleash the OneAmerica army on this event.”

In a meeting to get OneAmerica employees pumped up about the event, Indiana Sports Corp. Chief of Staff and Strategy Sara Myer told the group the swim trials will include more than 1,500 athletes and more than 250,000 fans. As of early March, Myer said, more than 100 groups from as far away as Alaska had already purchased tickets for races.

In addition to the competition itself—which for the first time ever is taking place in a converted football stadium—activities will include a free fan fest at the Indiana Convention Center, 10 nights of free concerts at Meridian and Georgia streets, a 66-foot-tall replica of the Eiffel Tower and other attractions.

“USA Swimming has never taken this event to this level,” Myer said. “It’s going to be epic.”

That level of support is helping to make this year’s Olympic swim trials a bigger event than ever before, with the goal of attracting record-setting crowds, Ferguson said.•

Check out more 2024 Swimming Trials content.

Correction: This story has been corrected to say that Jim Morris drafted Scott Davison into helping organize the 2004 FINA world swimming championships.