While there’s still hope for the Toronto Raptors’ season to continue, Sun Life is getting ready for the 2022- 2023 NBA season, when it will become the team’s Official Health and Wellness Partner of the Toronto Raptors.

This is an evolution of the company’s existing sponsorship of the team. financial and insurance services company began its sponsorship of the Toronto Raptors in 2014, and in 2017 expanded its involvement to become the team’s first jersey patch sponsor.

Chris Hewitt, CMO of Sun Life in Canada, says the extended partnership will enable Sun Life to reach more Canadians to build awareness of its health offerings.

“We see this partnership as a way to create awareness about certain health topics, create engagement through different content, but ultimately helping Canadians live their best healthier lives,” he says. “We will use a range of things from interactive content to expressing insights from some of the Raptors partners. You’ll start to see that evolution in our content and marketing starting with the official launch in the fall.”

Sun Life worked directly with the Toronto Raptors to develop the relationship. The company works with Publicis for creative and Cossette Media to handle media for the sponsorship.

As part of the expanded partnership, the two brands will work together to develop new content and resources for Canadians that leverage the Raptors’ health and wellness experts along with the Sun Life health ecosystem. This will include Lumino Health, its website and app that provides healthcare information and helps Canadians find healthcare providers.

Last fall, Sun Life announced the creation of Sun Life Health, a new business unit focused on empowering Canadians to live their healthiest lives no matter where they are in their health journey. Even prior to that, exploring the connection between financial health and other forms of health and well-being was a big part of Sun Life’s marketing, including the “Health Timeout” videos featuring Raptors players.

Sun Life will use some of this season’s existing “Health Timeout” content at the beginning of the new season launch in September, with new content appearing in social and digital properties such as NBA digital, TheScore and all of Sun Life’s organic posts. Sun Life will also be using digital tactics more often as well as channels that Sun Life historically hasn’t used before, such as Tik Tok.