Category: College

Athlete Social Media, College, Sponsorships

A Creator Economy Founder’s Practical Guide to NIL, Niche, and Negotiation

The athlete marketing complex and the creator economy are converging.

It was bound to happen. Athletes were among the earliest proto-influencers. So it only makes sense that, as opportunities in the creator economy grew and diversified, athletes could build on their influential platforms and become multi-hyphenate creators. But there’s an inherent paradox for elite athletes here: the tunnel-vision dedication and discipline that propels them to excellence in their sport can seem to brush aside extracurricular opportunities for some, while fueling a measured approach for others.

Most athletes only have a limited window of time to even consider the opportunity to develop and monetize their brand. A minuscule portion will get big stages in the pros or in prominent international competition, but the vast majority won’t. So their few years in college comprise that small window, though that doesn’t mean it’s easy or a given. Rachel Maeng has a unique POV having had various perspectives of the creator economy, athletics, and running a business. She competed in college sports, built her personal brand, negotiated brand deals for others, and counseled creators and athletes alike. She dispels the notion that every college athlete is engaging in ‘NIL,’ the shorthand for referencing all things related to activating and monetizing the name, image, and likeness of athletes.

“I talked to so many athletes in college and high school that are like, ‘I’m not doing NIL deals; honestly, I don’t have any time,'” said Maeng, who was a coxswain on the Rutgers rowing team during her college years. “In reality, I would say from what I’ve seen, maybe like 10% of each roster actually in college actively participates or is even interested in doing NIL deals. Because think about it, like, when I was in college, we were practicing every day at 7 a.m., and then I would go to class, and then I would have 3 p.m. lifts, and then I would go to class, and then I was in clubs and organizations…When does that leave time for me to create content and negotiate and do all those things? It doesn’t. And in reality, some kids cannot time manage as well as some other kids, so they’re not able to participate because they would fail classes or they would fail at their athletic opportunities.”

Given that use it or lose it nature of the college athletics platform, however, there can be a degree of pressure to squeeze it all in. You can’t leave money on the table, your peers are doing it, family and friends may expect it — there’s no shortage of factors that can weigh on a student-athlete’s mind. Maeng sees the struggles firsthand and recognizes not just the burden placed upon student-athletes trying to balance it all, but also the gap in education for those wading into the NIL game.

“I think the media and the social media that we see about, like, Oh, this kid made $8 million, so and so athlete just made a couple hundred thousand [dollars] working with Nike. That’s great, and that’s a great opportunity for that athlete who can handle it, who maybe has a team around them that can handle that. But if you can’t do it, you can’t do it,” said Maeng. “I think that we can’t put pressure on athletes to be able to participate in NIL while not giving them the education about how to do everything that comes with being your own business and running a business. And then there’s the mental health aspect that we were talking about before. There are just so many factors, I think, that go into it. You can’t expect it.”

But while NIL development and deals may not be for everyone, there are still a lot of student-athletes who do choose to wade into those waters, doing the quasi-creator and influencer thing alongside their athletic and academic endeavors. One of the best parts of college athletics, too, is the sheer diversity of student-athletes. Not only the sports they play, but their background and interests, present a panoply of ways to cultivate an audience that’s attractive for a brand.

There are only a select few athletes in the pros, let alone college, that have universal broad appeal. The same goes for creators, which is why the majority of creators lean into specific segments or niches, which can make them appealing and authentic endorsers for partners. It’s simplistic, but sometimes effective at a surface level, to jump on trends and pop culture topics, but generic audiences and content, absent immense, undeniable scale, do not make for an effective NIL. Brand deals shouldn’t feel random, but organic and expected. Maeng explained how she’d advise athletes, informed by her work with athletes and non-athlete creators alike.

“As it pertains to athletes, you can go out, and you can dance and do only trends and get a good amount of followers,” said Maeng, who was CEO and Founder of influencer and athlete-driven brand marketing and media production company GEN Agency before selling it. “But as soon as you start advertising, I don’t know, Nike or Jordan or you start advertising Kellogg’s Pop Tarts or Pringles, if you’ve never talked about those products before, your page has nothing to do with it, [then] it feels very inauthentic. So, if you’re a content creator and you’re also an athlete and you talk about training, then you talk about your family, you talk about your lifestyle, maybe you even talk about, like, skincare, you know, because you’re an athlete, you’re sweating, so how do you clean out your pores, I would 100% trust you to tell me what food to put in my body, what things to put on my skin, how to train for acceleration or how to train for explosion. Because those are the things that you have demonstrated expertise in.

“So I definitely think athletes should have some sort of niche to them. But then also, too, you’re a full-time athlete. You are literally spending all your time training or actually participating in a sport. You have limited time outside of that, especially as a college athlete, so pick and choose your battles, pick and choose your free time. And if you’re just making really general content, you’re going to eat up all that free time.”

With experience on all sides of the equation, Maeng understands the perspective and goals of brands and creators alike. When it comes to marketing and creators, brands think about audiences. Whom you can reach will largely dictate the brands and products/services for which you’re an appealing partner. For creators and athletes alike to make themselves attractive to brands, they have to consider why brands work with creators in the first place, and what goes into their decision-making, as Maeng explained.

“When a brand does marketing and uses some sort of talent to market, it’s because that talent can speak to the ideal customer that the brand has,” said Maeng, who today is a fractional COO and CMO, in addition to her work as an investor and adviser. “So like, if I’m Old Navy and I’m launching a new jeans campaign, I’m not going to talk to someone that is probably the same person that State Farm is using to talk about an insurance product. Why? Because the jeans might be for Gen Z people who are going to be under the age of 26, and State Farm Insurance, etc., you’re on your parents’ insurance until you’re 26, so you’re not going to be buying the same product that you would at 26 with the jeans. So it’s creators and talent who have that same ideal audience as the brand.

“Then lastly, it’s figuring out what brands are really interested in. If you see a brand never having been on TikTok, they are probably not going to immediately choose you to be on their TikTok; like, figure out where they are and meet them on the platforms that they are.”

The ball in the athlete’s court is just as important as the brand’s. It can be tempting to say yes to every paycheck, every deal. But as a creator athlete develops an audience, it’s the trust their audience has in them which makes them an appealing endorser in the first place. As many examples have shown over the years, one false step can inhibit the perception of dependability and integrity. This is another layer of counsel that NIL-focused athletes need as they figure out this space.

“At the end of the day, don’t tie yourself to products that aren’t quality, right?” said Maeng, who was an official TikTok partner as the platform ramped up its creator strategy. “Like, you don’t want to turn into these athletes that got caught up in the crypto scandals or any of the other scandals out there because they didn’t do their due diligence, because they thought this would be easy money. They didn’t look into who owns the company or what products were in the product or all those sorts of things…

“When I become an advisor, I put my name, image, and likeness on that company, and my belief in them and my expertise go with them, and my credibility goes with them. So I think everyone has to do their due diligence and really make a very serious, forward-thinking decision if they would like to tie themselves to that.”

There is no shortage of suits getting into athletes’ ears, preying on their untapped potential and relative naivete, to sign them up as a client. And sometimes, agents are a great value-add, but the notion that every athlete seeking to monetize their NIL needs an agent is misleading, Maeng told me. She explained the key considerations in what an athlete needs and when an agent does and does not make sense to bring into the fold, and the potential risks to watch out for.

“In my opinion, if you have your own platform and if you have opportunities in brand deals, you don’t need an agent, you just need a lawyer, and maybe a publicist, someone that can help get your SEO out there, can help get you in front of good opportunities,” said Maeng, who also noted that brand deals don’t happen willy-nilly, but are more often part of brand campaigns planned months in advance. “But an agent should only be used if their opportunities and the things that they have for you outweigh what you currently have. Because at the end of the day, agents make a commission, so they really only get paid on what they bring in or what they work on. And it might get to the point where one agent has like 30 athletes, and he doesn’t have time to work on the bottom 20, he’s only working on the top ten, and you’re going to get upset, you’re going to get unmotivated, all those things, because you realize someone doesn’t care about you or your business as much as you do.”

All of these factors discussed in the preceding paragraphs illuminate the main point: student-athletes, college administrators, university leaders — all this stuff is new to them. The responsibilities for overseeing and preparing athletes for NIL deals are not something to be added to an existing role in the department, nor is an added hire from within the sports world. College programs need someone who has done the thing, who has worked with brands, managed creators (and/or were or are creators themselves), who knows all the things those aforementioned parties don’t.

Maeng and others like her have spent time at schools, working with student-athletes and school administration. She’s seen the gaps to fill, and she spoke with conviction, enumerating the must-haves for these programs to set up their student-athletes for success.

“I think, number one, there are too many agents in the space and not everybody needs an agent, honestly. But I think there are people like myself, people like Sam Green, and people in other companies like Advance, at Greenfly, who are experts in what they educate about.

“Schools should bring in people who can not just speak from experience and speak on education, but I think schools need to actually go a step further and develop curriculum for their athletes about what is a personal brand, how to build it up, how to put that voice into action on social media, then how to make an LLC, how much money that you have to put away for taxes, how to file taxes, how to find a good manager and interview them and figure out if they’re a good fit, how to talk to brands, how to negotiate, how to even turn that into a bigger opportunity. All the things that go along with NIL, I think, need to be taught in some sort of classroom environment.”

This NIL era is new for everyone, not just the student-athletes at the center of it. The systems are being built by the day, the rules are constantly evolving, and many of the administrators and leaders are learning as they go. There is no precedent for programs to follow to adapt to the new normal, but, Maeng reminds us, it’s okay to recognize that there’s a lot you don’t know. The creator economy has been around for years, so while a lot of this is new (and nuanced, to be fair) for college athletics, there are those far more experienced and informed that schools can and should lean on and learn from. Maeng offered her perspective, having worked with schools, and what she’s seeing in the industry.

“I think anyone that has brought in a good platform or a good partner, whatever it is, is taking those first steps; it’s really important,” she said. “Just even admitting they don’t know everything, because, you know, you don’t know everything. I don’t know everything. I don’t even call myself an expert. So I think people that are actively making steps to make this easier on athletes, to make the experience something that they can actually leverage and learn from, I think they’re doing a great job.

“They have to just keep trying to help the athletes and keep trying to be better in the space.”

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH RACHEL MAENG

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College, Esports, Fan Development, Social Media

What You Need to Know about Esports and Fan Development: The Challenges, the Opportunities, and the Promising Paths Forward

There aren’t many casual esports fans. There are loads of casual video game fans, but esports fans are avid, fanatical, and extremely engaged.

That oversimplified reality is both a challenge and an opportunity for the present and future of esports.

Esports haven’t had time yet to build generational fandom (even though fandom spans age ranges). It’s not as easy to attract find ‘casual’ fans who may flip through a broadcast network on a weekend, get exposed at a sports bar, or see some incredible highlights on ESPN or other sports media. And esports isn’t like other ‘sports’ — that’s obvious, but not in the way you think; it’s like trying to bucket all stick-and-ball sports into a single catch-all category. ‘Esports’ spans tons of ‘titles.’ The collection of popular esports titles like League of Legends, CS:GO, Valorant, Fortnite might as well be basketball, football, baseball, soccer, etc. And yet far more people have played a video game than have played in a football game. Some of the most popular global individual figures are gamers. Some of the biggest live events in the world are esports events.

So what’s stopping esports from emerging from the burst bubble of esports in recent years and what caused the so-called ‘esports winter’ in the first place?

Brendan Hall has a unique lens into esports. Prior to trading in grass fields for massive monitors, Hall covered ‘traditional’ sports for years, covering Super Bowls and Stanley Cups before making his way into esports. He witnessed the rise — as investment money poured in and teams were being sold for millions — and the subsequent regression. He watched as leaders trie to copy and paste the prevailing paradigms from stick-and-ball sports into the esports world. And it didn’t work. But every esports event he attends is a reminder to Hall of the high ceiling for esports, if they can nail the right business models.

“Live events are freaking special. It’s where the casual fan becomes the loyalist,” said Hall, who worked Oxygen Esports, part of the Kraft Entertainment Group, parent owner of the New England Patriots, among other entities, before he became Esports Coordinator at Endicott College. “But [live events] are also expensive to put on. And I don’t think the model should be totally predicated on selling a bunch of sponsorships either. So I think it’s hard to make money.

“I think, for whatever reason, you sometimes see, orgs leaning too early into the merch thing, like, Oh, let’s be 100 Thieves and we’ll do random drops around Southern California. We’ll do these FOMO events, when you show up and when they’re gone, they’re gone. [100 Thieves] has been working two decades on building that…It takes a long time to build that kind of community. The one thing that this industry could use more of probably is patience with seeing things out.”

Hall noted the discord between investors anticipating massive returns and the need for esports organizations and teams to build up community over time. As he made his way into esports, he took the community-building to heart, understanding that loyal fans can’t be taken for granted. Esports fandom IS still developing and IS a relatively new part of culture, so creating that sense of community and belonging and feeling part of something bigger is paramount, Hall explained.

“Every month or so, we’d have watch parties, free to attend, just show up,” said Hall, recalling his days with teams like the Boston Breach, “and any fan that showed up, I would just give him my cell phone number and say, ‘Hey, text me anytime.’ And sometimes they’d text me at 1:00 in the morning [about] roster movement. ‘Why did you drop this guy? What’d you think?’ ‘Oh, I’ll ask Murph when I get in in the morning, but I don’t know.’ I think they thought it was so cool that a director-level guy was willing to open the book for them and be transparent with them, and let them feel like they have a seat at the table, let them feel like this was their home.

“I think the reality is you have to be willing to meet your community where they are, and for me that includes face to face, text me anytime, you might piss off my wife, but so be it. Because it makes them feel like they have a place where they can be themselves and they have a place where they really actually have an outcome in a thing.”

The star player nature of sports has been part of esports virtually since the start. While more stable rosters and hereditary, geography-based fandom has led many traditional sports fans to ‘root for laundry,’ as comedian Jerry Seinfeld famously put it, esports fandom has always been player-centered. Such fandom can be iether a feature or a bug, depending on perspective. It means fans from all over the world will watch and attend events to catch a glimpse of their favorite players in action, regardless of which team they’re on. But it also means trying to recreate the franchise models in other sports is a bit more challenging.

But Hall sees such fandom and sees opportunity. Traditional sports see player-driven fandom more than ever now, whether it’s Messi bringing millions of fans to Inter Miami CF or LeBron taking his legion of fans from Cleveland to Miami to LA. The vital next step is to capitalize on the influx of fans, capturing them with content and storytelling that enhance affinity and avidity at all levels.

“At Boston Breach, like the amount of fans we had from all over the country, not just Boston, so to say we’re Boston’s team, well, this guy’s a fan of the Breach because they signed a certain player,” said Hall. “With the Uprising, we had fans in Omaha, Nebraska, because of players that we signed that they had followed when they played Overwatch. That’s also difficult to understand. That’s why I’m not so bullish on the franchise scene.”

He continued: “When I would ask people at our watch parties like, ‘Dude, you could watch this from your home on Twitch, why’d you drive three hours from Maine to come to Foxborough?’ And [they’d] say, ‘Well, yeah, but you guys have Methodz (Anthony Zinni) here and I like watching him play Call of Duty on Twitch.’ That’s a real thing. So the more you can establish relationships with those fans who might not meet you in person, through content, through the storytelling, that’s going to go a long ways.”

It’s those relationships and that community of esports fans that can transform the millions of video game-playing individuals into esports enthusiasts and fans. That’s part of the calculus at play, and the opportunity Hall sees for esports to reach the heights once envisioned. Playing video games is such a universal pasttime and the esports community is so welcoming and open, so it doesn’t require squinting to see the possibilities on the horizon.

“I’ve worked in the NFL. I’ve worked in sports media. I’ve worked in tech. I’ve never met a community like esports that’s been as inclusive and open-sourced. It’s incredible”, said Hall, who in addition to running Endicott’s esports programs also teaches courses in marketing and esports. “So I just think if you believe in that community, you’re going to thrive in the long term because the numbers are pointing away. My friend Chris Postell, esports founder, does a lot of really good research on the college scene. 90%, or close to it, of students entering college are gamers, whether they want to admit it out loud or not. 77% of of millennial parents play with their kids at least once a week. I play Super Smash Bros with my daughters every night, and it’s it’s awesome. This stuff is not going away.

“But one of the other problems I see, go back to the basketball logic. No one owns basketball, right? Somebody owns Fortnite, and they can change the rules, pull the plug, whatever, whenever they want, and that’s terrifying for a lot of third parties trying to work within the esports ecosystem.”

Several different ‘sports,’ or gaming titles, came up throughout the conversation with Hall, so the latter point about who owns and runs these games, is a particularly salient part of the picture. Esports organizations often compete in several titles, but that’s not exactly how fandom works. A diehard Rocket League fan may not care to watch Call of Duty, a CS:GO fan may not give two rips about League of Legends.

Hall faces this conundrum head-on in building the esports program at Endicott. The biggest esports organizations face such choices, too. The way Hall sees it for the esports world at-large, they’re best off cultivating superfans around a title or two than trying to reach and claw for the attention of casual fans in hopes they’ll convert. The desire to grow the overall number, even at the expense of avidity, is admirable, sure, but it’s not the path to sustainability for the industry.

“I love this concept that Kevin Kelly, the great entrepreneur, wrote years ago about 1000 true fans,” explained Hall. “One of his all-time most read blog posts is about this idea that if you have 1000 fans that spend $100 a year on your work, that’s six figures in your pocket. So it’s more worth it to focus in on those loyalists because they’re going to end up spending more money with you over the long run.

“So, similar concept, right? Again, you talk about micro communities. I think you’re better off really focusing on a couple titles, and that’s where they have a lot of success.”

The avid players, the loyalists — that’s the goal. But you do have to start somewhere, of course. The underlying opportunity for esports is that casual fans already exist in spades. The path from casual gamer to esports fan isn’t linear, but the participation and organic exposure to the titles within esports cultivate a natural potential interest. If part of the magic of traditional sports is that any kid can grow up envisioning themselves hitting the game-winning home run or knocking down the buzzer-beater shot, that same sense of accessibility can last well past grade school for esports.

Hall reflected on those natural pathways, offering his real-life experience building up Endicott’s program — through coffee shop encounters.

“Where the Overwatch Championship Series, I think, has a chance, it feels more holistic, like it’s going to feel like almost a Premier League relegation-promotion kind of system, like, anybody can kind of come from the top,” said Hall, alluding to the meritocratic nature of pure esports. “That’s a system that feels like you can get behind, it comes from a place of more common sense, more aligned with how esports fans behave.”

Hall went on, describing the organic but opportunistic growth of his teams at Endicott: “All the Starbucks kids are on our Fortnite team now, because they were working at the Starbucks [near Endicott’s esports lab]. I’d come by every day, get a coffee, they’d come down here to their lunch break and they’re playing on the PCs between classes, and one of them, Sam, just got a Victory Royale last night for the first time all season. Six months ago, I was just bumping into him every day, buying a coffee from him at Starbucks.

“So the casuals, as they enjoy this place more, they’re going to want to learn how they can take the next step.”

Esports doesn’t need to mimic traditional sports to succeed, it needs to embrace what makes it different. The passion is already there. The player-first fandom, the global accessibility, the embedded community culture — all of it is fertile ground for something lasting.

It won’t happen overnight. Esports isn’t built to amass a cadre of casuals. The future of esports won’t be decided by flashy moments or headline deals, it’ll be built fan by fan, event by event, and through rich storytelling and deep connections. Video gaming isn’t going anywhere, so the potential for esports remains as bright as ever.

Athlete Social Media, College, Social Media ROI, Sponsorships

Student-Athletes as Influencers: A View from Learfield on How NIL Is Reshaping College Sports Marketing

The onset of NIL has already upended the college athletics world and it’s about to do so again.

With the anticipated official approval of the House Settlement on April 7, the ability for schools, the student-athletes, and corporate sponsors to comingle will expand even further, presenting unprecedented opportunity for a new, more rewarding (in more ways than one) student-athlete experience.

For college sports marketing powerhouse Learfield, their conversations with partners are evolving with the onset of ‘student-athlete influencer marketing,’ creating even better activations and enriching the experience for student-athletes. The interest in creators and influencers continues to grow in and out of sports, marked by the universal truth that people connect with people more than brands (or mascots).

“NIL, in a good way, has really opened things up for the storytelling and created an opportunity for my team to think about when we go into a pitch with a brand or another platform or even an athletic director — putting athletes at the center of that storytelling,” said Grant Jones, Senior Vice President and Head of Content for Learfield. “Which in the content world is way more interesting than us pitching a bunch of concepts around — I mean, I love mascots — [concepts] around a bunch of mascots or, you know, a facilities tour. We’ve done a lot of facilities tours. We had to do a bunch of content that really a lot of times didn’t feature or didn’t focus on student-athletes.

“Now that we can pay the athletes to be in this content when the brands are involved in a big way, it opens up storytelling in a big way. So in the last year, even more so, our content is now storytelling with athletes at the center of it.”

As Learfield has kept up with the opportunities that the changing regulations present, schools have been busy finding ways to funnel more money to student-athletes in various ways leading up to the commencement of revenue sharing expected to start with the House Settlement approval. NIL Collectives sprung up around the country along with dubious dealmaking — but in the new world, there will be more ‘true’ NIL, where companies like Learfield, as Jones noted above, can work with sponsors and schools to include student-athletes in sponsor deals.

Every decade or so of college athletics seems to usher in a new sort of ‘arms race,’ marked in recent years by ballooning staffs and increasingly flashy facilities. The next, as Learfield sees it playing out, will be legit NIL opportunities, that allow student-athletes to earn more money on top of the House Settlement revenue sharing (capped at $20.5 million overall).

“It’ll be on top of the student-athlete compensation revenue share piece. So I do think you’re going to see an arms race develop, a new arms race, developing, which was traditionally in coaches salaries and facilities, transition into authentic NIL dealmaking for student-athletes at the universities prioritized. And they’re going to be leaning on us to be a solution for that,” said Solly Fulp, Executive Director for NIL Growth and Development at Learfield, who noted the unique role Learfield can play with their scale of brand and university partners.

“If you think about it, we have the intellectual property rights, so we’re the ones that can connect brand partners with school IP in these campaigns. We’re the only ones that can do that if we’re representing the university. We have over 12,000 brand partners that we’re contracted with both locally and nationally. We have the people power on the ground to activate these campaigns, which is critical when you’re dealing with 18-to-24-year-olds and making sure that this goes well for the brand partner and the student-athlete and it’s good for their experience.”

Arms races in college athletics ultimately come down to fielding the best teams that can attract fans and media and engagement, win championships and drive all the accompanying revenue streams. Jones, who leads Learfield’s content division, noted that while having sponsored content in their social feeds was once met with mild resistance from college athletics staff, brand presence in the feeds is a welcomed addition.

“[It’s pivoted now where a lot of schools want more brands with athletes on their content because it’s great for recruiting,” said Jones. “That is a huge [change]. It’s just funny how much things have changed just in that simple part of the business because of NIL, not only what it means to revenue generation, but to recruiting.

“If you can prove as a school that you’re bringing in, even if it’s a local content deal, that is a positive thing as recruits are scrolling on Instagram.”

Student-athletes will no doubt be enticed by the opportunities to engage in real NIL while they compete in their sport and work toward a degree (in theory at least). There’s a quiet part some are saying out loud, though, because NIL — real NIL (i.e. not paper bags full of cash) takes time. And that’s on top of a demanding schedule of classes and classwork — education is still an essential part of the student-athlete experience for 99% of the — along with practices, travel, and games. So while it’s exciting to envision endless deals and content, Learfield recognizes the best outcomes will try to balance time demands and to lean more in to deals that make sense organically for the student-athletes.

“They have 168 hours in a week,” said Fulp, a former college athlete himself before getting into the business of college sports. “They already don’t have enough time for commercial dealmaking with their athletic and their academic endeavors, so I think we’re getting really strategic on when we engage the student-athletes, when we capture content, when we bring opportunities to the table to make sure that they can be student-athletes, and working with the schools on that.

Fulp continued: “I think we’re getting much better at that, and what campaigns work, and the storytelling behind it, that is really resonating with the corporate partners, and I think as we get to know our student-athletes outside their sport and major — what their likes and interests are and what they represent in values when they take their jersey off…Once we discover [that] and we’re getting better at discovering their likes and interests, we can pair them up with the right brands. And when you do that, it’s like next-level engagement. You can see it in the campaigns and the storytelling content that Grant and his team bring to the table.”

Even the most thoughtful, spot-on partnerships and deals still have to be activated, and these days that often means content — videos or photos or both, often meant for social and digital media. Content is the name of the game for the creator economy, but student-athletes aren’t professional creators. The value of the name, image, and likeness for the vast majority of student-athletes isn’t from the content they produce, but their influence.

While it’s easy to assume that all of Gen Z are native creators, having grown up in a rich content ecosystem with all the hardware and software in their pocket, Jones and the Learfield team appreciate that it’s not that easy. It can be intimidating to produce content for which a brand is paying, so Learfield is there to ensure everything goes smoothly and to put both sides at ease.

“There are not too many athletes that are fully comfortable, and this is professional [athletes] too, that are fully comfortable taking brand dollars, taking a brand brief, creating something on their own with their cell phone and putting it back to a brand, especially if it’s a national brand, and thinking that they’re good to go,” said Learfield’s content lead Jones. “The idea of creating something on their own is, I think, difficult…

Jones continued: “That might mean they’re setting up an entire production and there’s a couple of cameras and the athlete comes in and does something. It might mean they go over to the practice facility with a cell phone and just shoot something with the athlete real quick and they’re not even taking the footage into a post-production software.

“We are really making sure that the athletes are in a position to succeed, the brand is happy with what they get back and that there’s, obviously, the recognizable intellectual property of the school involved…”

While Learfield is there to lend a helping hand, the sheer volume of deals and number of student-athlete influencers means the organization has to be smart about where they allocate resources. It also means they have massive potential to put together far-reaching, national deals that are lucrative for schools and student-athletes, and effective for brand partners.

“When NIL was first starting…[and] there’s a local pizza shop that wants to give five athletes $1,000 each to create some content, does Learfield get involved in that? Is that a thing that we want to play with?” Jones posed rhetorically. “We quickly learned that the work it takes to do that $5,000 deal on the content and student-athlete and influencer side might not be that much less work than the $500,000 deal from the hospital down the street from the pizza shop.

“So our business is about creating the most value for our brand partners, combining those three things — media assets, IP from the school marks and logos and the student athletes’ NIL. Then how that manifests to bigger deals, like the national deals that I mentioned is, that’s where content is a huge driver of that.”

The ‘content’ portion of the revenue pie for Learfield and its partners continues to grow — while making the overall pie even bigger. Driven by the ever-insatiable appetite from fans for content featuring their favorite teams and student-athletes, Learfield recognizes the underlying paradigm of their business is evolving — and that it presents a heck of an opportunity. Fulp spoke enthusiastically about the increase in content demand, flanked by the opportunity to tell richer student-athletes’ stories with their involvement, and what it means for the present and future of the business.

“We’ve been an event-driven business. We’ve been selling football packages and basketball packages, and it’s been really wrapped around the actual athletic event,” explained Fulp. “This opens up the year-round engagement with the student athletes that these university communities want, so the storytelling and the connections can happen in the off-season.

“And what we’re realizing and appreciating is that these university communities can’t get enough of the content with the student athletes associated with it. They want to consume it, and they’re consuming it. So when you connect it with the right brand partners, it is magic. It’s exciting.”

It all IS exciting. For years, many descried the state of the industry, with student-athletes getting remuneration for all their efforts in the form of scholarships only, while millions of dollars flowed from their labor and NIL. The new era is exciting, but it’s about more than just money exchanging hands. The best outcomes for, again, ‘real’ NIL transcends a paycheck; student-athletes are getting valuable experience that’ll serve them well beyond their athletic careers. They’ll make money, but also learn about business, form invaluable relationships, and get more out of their time in collegiate athletics than ever before. Fulp reflected on the dynamic landscape, speaking forcefully about the need to keep the student-athlete at the center of the conversation going forward. Amidst all the change, the money, and the opportunities, it all goes back to what’s best for the student-athlete.

“The challenge now is we’ve got to reconstruct some of the stuff, incorporate NIL the right way, and prepare these young adults to go out and do really awesome things outside their sport,” said Fulp. “And I think we have the opportunity to do that. I think it’s going to be really additive to the university and align with the university’s mission, values, and purpose.

“But university leaders, when they’re thinking about conference realignment and they’re thinking about the $20.5 million distribution to these student athletes and some really big things, making sure that at the end of the day, when these kids leave these universities, they feel like they’ve gotten just as much or more from the university that they gave.”

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH LEARFIELD’S SOLLY FULP AND GRANT JONES

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College, Content Strategy

From Websites to AI: The Evolution and Arms Race in Sports Creative

Look across a dozen creative departments in sports and you’ll find a dozen different organizational structures — no two teams or college programs approach it quite the same way.

There are varied levels of investment (and internal buy-in), some collaborate more or less frequently with external agencies and freelancers, and others boast massive teams of specialists. The creative talent in the sports world is more impressive than ever, rivaling any other industry. Even as the creative field gets disrupted by generative AI, the appreciation for the value of strong graphics, video production, social media branding, and digital experiences is stronger than ever.

Bob McKamey can remember a time when the digital presence for major sports organizations and athletes were relative afterthoughts. When he co-founded digital studio UnCommon Thinking, having a dynamic, polished website was a burgeoning opportunity to engage and develop fans online. Then came social media, and multimedia social media — it was mainly just text in the earliest days, kids, so the onslaught of photos and then video and all of the derivative formats and form factor-driven creativity brought us to the current day where creative execution is a key concern for any sports team or college program. In a recent interview, McKamey reflected on the evolution of internal creative teams and what he saw as some leaned into studios like UnCommon Thinking, while others built up in-house capabilities.

“As social media grew, all of a sudden we started seeing the teams that we worked with started hiring their own designers, their own photographers, their own video people,” said McKamey, who co-founded UnCommon Thinking in 2003. “In some cases, you’re exactly right, it completely pushed us out 100%. In other cases, it was maybe 50-50, and to be honest with you, right now, a lot of our clients and a lot of the work we do is behind-the-scenes recruiting work [such as recruiting in college athletics]…

“So, now it’s really more like just a straight partnership. A lot of times they’ll do the front end stuff, game day as an example, and they’ll farm out all of the extra recruiting stuff to us on the back end.”

It’s hard for the public to comprehend how much creative output some of these massive sports teams, and especially college programs produce. It’s that often unseen volume of work, still just as necessary in the NIL and transfer portal era, that separates the big budget programs from their smaller counterparts. It’s not uncommon to see incredible work from the smallest schools, creative talent is thriving all over. The difference is the bigger programs can produce more of it, whether that means availing themselves of a resource like UnCommon Thinking or from beefed-up in-house teams. McKamey described what he sees, as he has worked with college programs up and down the spectrum in terms of budgets ad resources.

“The big difference is,” he explained, “I think if you gave the lead designer at a big school and the lead designer at a small school, and you said, ‘Hey, you got two hours to come up with a great idea’, I think in today’s marketplace, the quality would actually look pretty close.

“The problem is when you need to come up with designs for 50 recruits, [you] need game day content, NIL content — that person that’s only got 1 or 2 people and no access to someone like me to help them out, they really can’t play in the same type of field. So the quality of the quantity of graphics doesn’t really match up to the bigger programs now.”

There’s an infinite demand for creative output in sports, even when time, resources, and budget are finite and often insufficient. The ability to activate and attract corporate partners (and the sponsorship revenue) has been one driver in recent years of increased buy-in and budgets. But especially in college athletics, the biggest needle movers remain the CEO of the college programs (aka head coach) and the student-athletes with their continually increased bargaining power. With creative leaders frequently seeking ways to get more buy-in and budget, McKamey said it’s those two parties that hold the cards more than any other factors.

“I think it has to be coach-driven, number one, they have to understand the value of it, the creative that they get and how it affects recruiting, how it affects the brand impression people have,” said McKamey whose studio has worked with major college athletics program for years. “If they get it, then I think the money comes.”

He continued: “And it’ll be interesting, the whole thing with NIL, one of the things we’re seeing now is, more than ever, the individual recruits are wanting more and more of a say in their own graphics. It’s like the graphics are no longer sent back to the program for approval, they’re sent to them and then sent to the kid and his parents for approval. [It’s like] they’re directing us on creative. You’re seeing more and more of that now.”

No matter who’s making the asks and giving the approvals, all creative teams are reckoning, for better or for worse, with the arrival of generative AI. Veterans will recognize that generative AI isn’t that new (content-aware fill has been around), but no one can deny the ever-improving capabilities of generative AI to produce and edit images, graphics, objects, and even video will transform the industry. McKamey is not running away from these new tools, which some perhaps naively see as a threat to livelihoods, instead recognizing what they can do to empower others, enhance communication, and allow creatives to work better. For McKamey, who concedes that actually producing the creative is not his area of expertise, he noted how tools like Midjourney helps him work better with clients and his team of creative producers.

“A lot of times what I try to do with our team — this is more on how our process works — like, if we get a new project, I’ll try to give the designers as much information as possible about what it is. So as many samples, as many ideas, as many adjectives and things that they can handle,” said McKamey, who commented that savvy gen AI prompters seem to be able to get good enough to pass as legit creators. “So for me, it’s helped; like, I’ll go in and I’ll do samples through Midjourney and then as part of the creative brief include that for the actual designers themselves to go off of.”

Even as these generative AI tools continue to get better and better, there is little for existential crises within the creative field. But the field is changing. Whether one is starting with a blank canvas in an Adobe application or a blank text field on Open AI’s platform — there remains a need for creativity, originality, and the ability to go from something in your head to speaking and producing it into reality. For those who don’t consider themselves professional creatives (this author included), generative AI tools force us to appreciate the details that go into creative production, the minuscule but meaningful elements that the pros hone over several years and projects. McKamey has produced creative briefs for years and he’s continuing to educate himself by practicing and watching the words that can lead to the foundations of creative masterpieces.

“A lot of times I’ll just sit there in Midjourney and I’ll watch all the other prompts that are coming through, and I’ll pick up ideas just based on that to see what they’re doing,” he said. “A lot of times it has nothing to do with sports, but it’s like you said, the right angle, the sizing, the lighting, whether you want it to be an illustration type of thing, a cartoon type of thing, a portrait. It’s opening a lot of windows, but I think if you just learn how to control it and use it in the proper way, it can really help out what you’re doing on the end result.”

The creative landscape in sports continues to evolve, presenting both challenges and opportunities for creative leaders. The pressure to serve multiple masters – from coaches and athletes to sponsors and fans – while maintaining creative excellence requires adaptability and strategic thinking. 

Successful creative leaders in sports will be those who can navigate this complex terrain, leveraging both internal talent and external resources to produce innovative, impactful content that drives engagement and supports organizational goals. As the industry moves forward, the ability to blend creativity with strategic vision and embrace new technologies will be crucial for those at the helm of sports creative teams.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BOB MCKAMEY

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College, Content Strategy, Social Media

The Evolution of the Creative Operation in Sports and Why It Needs Leadership and Structure

What’s your LinkedIn bio snippet?

You know, most people have their job title and the place they work. Others have something more operative, like what they ‘do.’ Although I don’t love the vague nature of the latter, it’s an instructive way to think about one’s job. The answer to the infamous question from the Bobs in the Office Space: ‘What would you say you do here?’ (look it up, kids, and watch the movie if you haven’t seen it!).

It’s not so aggrandized to characterize the actual day-to-day work as something more grandiose, but to understand how producing that video, writing that email, or building that report is connected to the rest of the organization; how the modular work on the assembly line affects the bottom line success for the company and how it ultimately ties back to your to-do list.

Such is the potential disconnect between the endless demands of the creative team, especially for a sports organization, and the rest of the business. The quantity of content output for the creative team — graphics, videos, and everything in between — continues to increase. This is overall a good thing, as organizations appreciate that engaged attention, and content earning that attention, is the ultimate currency. But as teams grow and the content practice evolves from an arthouse to a well-oiled factory floor, a layer of management is necessary. That transition is taking place now, ensuring the quantity doesn’t drown out the quality and the art finds a way to meet the science.

“When you’re looking at ticket sales and fan engagement, it’s really hard when you only have 1 or 2 graphic designers to support all those (objectives),” said Akshay Ram, a Product Manager at Adobe who has years of experience in sports creative, including during his undergrad at Syracuse. “So then it comes down to who’s making the call for priorities. And in the college space, I don’t think that specific person is established as much, so it makes it a little more challenging, and I think that’s part of what that transition looks like.”

Prioritization. That’s the mechanism through which the art must be balanced. I can remember back in college speeding through video edits while others would spend days tweaking and perfecting a single photo or graphic composition. Software solutions are certainly facilitating the production process now, as Ram can attest sitting at one of the biggest and most ingrained and integral companies at Adobe. The new world in which everyone can at least pose as a creative (think back to the early days of Instagram filters, even) means the role of a full-time skilled and studied creative is evolving. I spoke with Ram about the balance of the creative team with empowering others to complete the last mile of content with only the creative team owning the final export.

“Something I preach all the time [is] are you are you working efficiently by doing what you’re doing? Can you provide some of that trust to someone else by setting yourself up for success and them up for success?” said Ram, who also worked with Bleacher Report during his time studying and working at Syracuse (he likes being busy!) “There are many tools that are going in that direction right now where, as a creative, you can’t just think about being the most creative person and putting in all these flashy effects. What do [colleagues] need in order to communicate the message that they’re trying to send out? And maybe that just requires a simple template and you as a creative setting that up for someone else to go in and just change the parameters that you establish.”

Whether it’s templates that help maintain quality while scaling output and autonomy or more premium content, the creative part of an organization is delivering solutions more than ‘stuff.’ It’s stuff with a purpose that conveys a brand and seeks to accomplish objectives and, ultimately, to move that proverbial needle in the desired way. We’re in an era now (not so much an era, just a before/after new way of the world) in which everything is measured, for better or for worse. Even artistic masterpieces or hit songs are broken down into bits and analyzed. And the creatives in sports have had to become part of the new paradigm — it’s a necessity when there are thousands of pieces going out every season and an insatiable desire for more and better. This is where the creative leader needs to lead, preaches Ram.

“They just give anyone this title of creative director [referring specifically to college athletics in this context] and then they expect them to also create content. So what they’re not doing is actually analyzing what’s going into producing the content and how that translates,” he said. “We talked at the beginning of this about how most schools just want to sell tickets to games or turn viewership up and don’t understand what market size looks like and if the market size is translating to the expected viewership, all these kinds of things. So creatives don’t actually have a KPI that’s embedded with what they do, and they also don’t get the information from the higher-ups. How we solve it is a great question…

Ram continued: “Many times you need to have that chain of influence where someone can tell you, ‘Hey, it’s not just about reaching 6 million impressions or engagement, but it’s: in order for us to get there, we need to deliver in this capacity.’ And that middle ground between the two, I think, should be facilitated at the creative director role, where they know how to filter the numbers from the creative, allow the creative to do the work, and then they kind of dictate what’s our direction to get there.

“That’s where a lot of these titles aren’t actually aligning to fruition with what they say. I think they should be that filter between the people who are actually doing the core functions and the people who are asking for it.”

Everyone has a scoreboard — but even the most sophisticated systems of measurement can’t capture everything. There is dark social through which the reach of content increases exponentially (and content with a higher propensity to get shared via those channels), content that elicits activity or feelings or depth and strength of activity and feelings. It can feel simplistic to juice engagement and reach numbers through more content output, but that’s not always the right answer.

“They’re like, ‘Oh, I need quote tweets, I need retweets and reposts’ and all that kind of stuff,” said Ram. “They don’t think about ‘How do you make good content that people just want to absorb and send to other people?’ And I think that’s where reach comes into play and also plays a role in how you’re thinking about creating at scale. Because all it takes is one platform to really enhance the success of your campaign that you’re working on, the content that you’re creating.”

When they know the outcomes and objectives at play creative leaders can manage all those variables — time, resources, premium output, templates — to achieve maximum results with optimal efficiency. We’ve arrived there, when the creative department of the organization needs to operationalize and the leader isn’t necessarily the most talented designer or producer, but an individual responsible for managing all the moving parts and processes.

“That’s where I’d love to see the community move in that direction, where they are understanding the KPIs, they’re establishing KPIs and there is someone that is heading that creative department who’s translating that to something that makes sense from a creative standpoint,” said Ram, “which is, you know, ‘Let’s spend this much time to execute on this. If we were given one week to get this done, what’s the best piece of content we can create? How do we take that and package it in a way where it’s not just one deliverable, it’s maybe one video, ten stories that can go across these platforms?’ That’s where the social media team plays a role.

“I think the creative director has to be that filter that can communicate with the social media manager and marketing to make that happen.”

The last decade or so has seen the ascent of the creative department within an organization to invaluable and indispensable — an essential part of the team. Such a place requires a more strategic approach to it all and the present and future creative leaders must play a vital role in the maturation and professionalization of creative. The importance of content will only increase from here on out, inspiring a new era of innovation and storytelling that will propel organizations forward and redefine the boundaries of creative potential.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH AKSHAY RAM

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College, Content Strategy, Digital

The Challenges for College Athletics Social Media Strategy and How USC Athletics Manages to Fight On Across Sports

Consider how daunting the social media operation is for a college athletics program. A couple dozen sports or more, multiplied by however many platforms, all unified under a single brand and trying to reach and engage a diversity of demos and age ranges of fans, donors, and recruits while the roster of athletes turns over every few years.

I mean, where does one even begin?

There’s no template to follow and there are different structures across schools, each with its different resources and set of programs. But they’re all facing those challenges noted above, with the complexities of NIL and realignment only increasing in recent years with no signs of abatement.

Jordan Moore has been there for all of it. Moore, who leads social media for one of the country’s most storied institutions, the University of Southern California (USC), was there for the early days — before Instagram existed, let alone TikTok and Snapchat. Platforms, staff sizes, and needs grew, which necessitated a new way to organize content production for the Trojans. There was too much communication needed, and too many demands that a constant conveyor built couldn’t hope to sustain with high standards in the long term. So Moore and his team changed things up in recent years to maximize alignment and collaboration.

“What we’ve done here over the last couple years and how things have changed, we went from what I would call a production-based model to an individual sport model,” said Moore who has been with USC Athletics since 2010 and is also an undergrad alumnus of the school. “The way it used to be, we were like a production house, so you would say like, ‘Oh, hey, we need a lacrosse video’ and then it would just go in through the video team and somebody would do it, and spit it back out. And then the next time you need a lacrosse video, somebody else would do it.

“What we’ve changed now in the sort of individual sport model, teams, pods, whatever you want to call it — every single sport knows who their social media person is, who their SID is, who their graphic designer is, who their video person is, so you have that little mini team within your larger creative team. Those groups are meeting and they’re coming up with their content calendars and their ideas, and they’re working hand in hand with the coaching staffs and the players, and so what you create is not just having SIDs embedded in programs, but everybody is.”

A college athletics program is the sum of parts creating a powerful collective whole. Each team is comprised of countless stories, each student-athlete a source of inspiration for fans to glom on to. Breaking records and winning championships are always a welcomed avenue for engagement, but, just like in team sports, it’s the human stories that drive the strongest connections. So while the official, catch-all USC Athletics social accounts serve as a ‘central hub’ for all the happenings of USC sports, celebrating the big wins and conference titles, Moore and his team know the path to fans’ hearts comes from fostering connections with the humans at the heart of it all, the student-athletes wearing Trojans colors.

“On the individual sport accounts we’re really focused on telling the stories of our student-athletes in multiple ways,” said Moore, who is also a seasoned broadcaster calling the USC men’s basketball games, among other assignments. “We obviously want to celebrate excellence, we want to celebrate winning — those things are very important to USC. And honestly, those are the things that that perform the best.

“But we also have a belief that if you make someone passionate about an athlete, or interested in an athlete, that you’re more likely to participate in social media, coming to games, supporting that team. The student-athletes are always going to be what drives the machine around here.”

The student-athletes are the consistent factor that can appeal to all of USC Athletics’ target audiences. Even those who don’t (yet) bleed cardinal and gold connect with the kids, which is a big reason why the individual sport accounts are so important even if the ‘main’ athletics accounts trump the majority when it comes to followers and reach. With lower scale comes more targeted, higher engagement, too, which Moore and his colleagues take into account for content production and strategic messaging. There’s no magic formula to accomplishing all those aforementioned diverse goals (let’s not even go into all the digital content and messaging the public does not see, often meant just for recruits via private channels), so USC has to prioritize and execute accordingly.

“Social media is a shotgun, it’s not a sniper rifle,” said Moore. “Sometimes I try to explain that to people [and] we’ll get somebody that says, ‘Oh, I want to get this message to students, let’s put it on the athletics account.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, that’s a really small percentage of the athletics account. How many students actually follow it? And then of that, what percentage is that of our total following?’ I don’t want to alienate 95% of our followers with any post. Obviously, when you run something like an athletics account, not everyone’s going to be interested in everything and that’s just the way it is. The sport accounts are going to have a little bit of a higher interaction rate.”

Those sport accounts, big and small, are really important. But the overall USC Athletics ‘brand’ is still the sun around which all others orbit. That dichotomy is inherent in college athletics and, without guidelines in place, there is risk of individual team accounts deviating from certain brand uniformity standards, rendering incoherence and confusion across accounts that nevertheless represent the same institution. There’s a careful balance — not being so strict as to denude every team of its distinct character, history, and culture while not losing that common throughline. Moore and USC take such a balanced approach, empowering individual sport accounts with the ability to riff while not losing what makes them USC Trojans.

“With that said, we also want the individual creativity of the designers and the creative teams around the individual teams, and then also the voice of the programs are just going to be different in so many ways,” Moore explained. “I mean, our football program, as an example, is such a legacy brand. [It’s] been around for 100 years and has national championships and Heisman Trophy winners, so there’s a certain voice that comes out of that account that is just different than our men’s basketball brand, which has kind of always been the second team in town to UCLA and never historically has won anything, so we take a little bit of a chippier, edgier tone to our content. You know, we are much more likely to poke at UCLA. On the football side, there would be no reason to sort of stoop down to it kind of thing. So those are the ways that you that you look at it.”

Each team stands on its own under the USC umbrella; each team with its coach setting the culture, a voice and point of view, and a unique set of student-athletes that come through every year. The dynamic nature of the roster is perhaps the most challenging aspect of all when it comes to college sports, and it’s only getting tougher in the age of NIL. Professional sports long ago made its marketing start-driven, it’s “[Superstar player] and the [team]” messaging, using the power of stardom and intimacy of human connections to bring fans into the fold for years. But in college, the best players on the team are on the marquee for maybe a year or two.

Many fans will gladly fall in love with a student-athlete, celebrate them, and then move on to the next batch. That equation doesn’t always work so smoothly, though, especially when a transcendent individual comes along. While a professional team will have several years to leverage a player’s star power to win over a fan, that timeline is significantly constricted in college. There are lessons to be learned from the pros, with their roster movement becoming more common, but the challenge remains greater for college. As NIL makes these stars shine even brighter, the risk and opportunity of fleeting phenoms donning the school colors is palpable. USC has enjoyed star players passing through Pasadena for generations. So while modern times may magnify it all, the circumstances are not new for Moore and his team.

“We’re still trying to stay tapped into that relationship and hopefully those fans too,” he said, reflecting on one of college sports’ biggest names playing for USC this year in Bronny James. “So we’ll create a lot of content around those kind of things to stay tapped into those people. But ultimately you are using their platform to sell your program. And we constantly have conversations about, ‘Hey, if you have an opportunity like a Bronny, you have to capitalize on it, because a year from now you might have 12 guys that no one’s ever really heard of and then are you back to square one or did you accomplish something?”

Moore also spoke about the Golden State Warriors as a real-life example, as they seek to maintain generations of fans beyond the day the Steph-Klay-Draymond dynasty ends. “That’s a good example of like, ‘Hey, we’ve got this moment right now with Steph and Draymond and Klay and we’re winning titles, okay, what are we going to do with it? You’re always going to be popular in San Francisco, but they found a way to extend their audience.”

There are so many avenues for fandom in college sports. Someone may come into the fold because they want to watch Bronny or heard about the exploits of women’s basketball phenom JuJu Watkins or women’s golf wunderkind Amari Avery, their parents or grandparents may be alums, perhaps they went to a sports camp at the school when they were kids, or they watched a Trojans team win a title. No matter the entry point it all ladders back to the brand, to the university. To manage all of the teams and content and social media is no small feat, but it’s both a challenge and an opportunity because having so much to wrangle means there are also so many chances to earn engagement and win over a fan for life.

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH JORDAN MOORE

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College, General Marketing, General Sports Business

How to Create a Distinct Entity around a Sports Partnership: The Duke’s Mayo Bowl Story

Pick a college football bowl game. Any will do. What is the ‘brand’ of the bowl game? Does it have a distinctiveness that colors the perception, even a personality, that’s consistent over time?

The Rose Bowl has its pageantry and the Sugar Bowl has its New Orleans location, but for most of the decades-long history of the dozens of bowl games and their various sponsors over the years, there wasn’t much distinctiveness to speak of. But when Miller Yoho rejoined the Charlotte Sports Foundation (following a stint earlier in his career), he and the team there had a hunch a strong brand could help them stand out and, in doing so, set a foundation to raise all KPIs for the bowl game they ran in Charlotte — today known as the Duke’s Mayo Bowl (previously the Belk Bowl, among others). Because while bowl games are by definition an annual ephemeral entity, creating something distinct can be lasting.

“We’ve taken the long approach in understanding brand building is important,” said Yoho, Director of Marketing and Communications for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, which runs the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, Jumpan Invitational, and other Charlotte-based sports events. “People have seen our strategy for the Duke’s Mayo Bowl — [that] started in 2014 when it was the Belk Bowl, understanding that no one was going to buy a bowl game ticket in October, so why not just be a part of the college football ecosystem? Why not have fun? Why not make jokes? And by doing that, people developed an affinity for the game and it became a destination rather than being matchup-dependent.

“Now we’re still very matchup-dependent, but TV tune-in, things like that — people see the Duke’s Mayo Bowl as something they want to see. And we do have fans coming because of how much fun we are, how we wink at the camera and do all that.”

There are so many bowl games crammed together in December that they can start to blend together, so Yoho and his team sought to be a purple cow amidst the herd. To put the game on the map — which would attract attention, drive more value for the eponymous partner, and increase the platform of the bowl game and the organization behind it overall.

There’s a delicate dance, however, in developing a brand for the bowl game that necessarily comingles with the title sponsor. Because while title sponsors don’t hold those spots in perpetuity (see the history of most any bowl game and the shifts in sponsors over the years), they are right there on the marquee of any and all bowl game brand accounts. The trick is finding those intersections, the north star for any good partnership, and building a relationship of trust and collaboration.

“[The Duke’s Mayo team] is aligned in what we’re trying to do,” said Yoho, who noted that Duke’s Mayo already has strong brand recognition in the south while they aim to increase their growing platform as a national brand. “They understand our mission, we understand theirs. It’s aligned. They push us…There is that constant healthy pushing to be the best possible. They understand and we understand [that] we want our games to stand alone. We want in the crowded bowl season marketplace of 40 other sponsors, we want Duke’s Mayo to be unique, and we want the Duke’s Mayo Bowl to be unique.”

Yoho continued, addressing the harmonious coexistence but distinctiveness of the Duke’s Mayo and Duke’s Mayo Bowl brands.

“Now, you do have two different brands,” he said. “You have the Duke’s Mayo brand and the Duke’s Mayo Bowl. There are places they intersect and there’s places where they probably are not on the same train track — but the train tracks run parallel. I shouldn’t be doing something that they deem inappropriate in the same way that they’re not going to speak about the game in a way that isn’t going to relate.

“So there’s a lot of healthy conversations and dialogue. We meet year-round weekly just to talk through things and activations. And we’re blessed in that they’re like rocket fuel to everything we do, they provide the substance to make all the marketing fun.”

At the most basic level, both entities seek to reach and engage college football fans. That’s who the Duke’s Mayo Bowl wants to attract to buy tickets, tune in to watch, and consume their ancillary content; and to meaningfully reach that audience is why a brand like Duke’s Mayo invests in a bowl game sponsorship in the first place. As Yoho noted earlier, the Duke’s Mayo Bowl is just the name of an annual game until the opponents get announced. Yoho and his team can’t affect those teams, but they can create a brand that gets fans and players of any team excited to get selected for the Duke’s Mayo Bowl by building an appealing brand and reputation. It all works together, too, in that creating a valuable and distinct brand produces a valuable platform for a partner like Duke’s Mayo.

It starts to sound pretty simple and logical in those terms, and Yoho’s remit is clear in that the best thing he can do is create a distinct brand that’s attractive to the broad college football fan base.

“There’s a lot of trial and error and discovery and now it’s become secondhand in terms of understanding, like, all we have to do is understand what college football is, which is probably the most chaotic and flawed of all sports and constantly changing, but lean into that and have fun and understand that it’s also because of that it’s beautiful,” said Yoho, articulating the thinking behind the Duke’s Mayo Bowl’s approach to personality, content, and social media. “I would argue college sports is probably the closest you come to religion in terms of just how you feel in a stadium — so lean into that. A

“And by doing that, it’s the long term payoff of you create a brand that people relate to. And then if you have a brand people relate to…[and then] out of left field [it gets announced that] you’re playing in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl [fans are] excited because they know that it’s a brand that’s fun, it doesn’t take itself too seriously and they’re going to show up and have the time of their lives. So that’s the payoff. It’s a ten-year bet, but it’s paying off.”

The beauty of building a sweeping brand, too, is that it transcends social media and makes all the other elements of the game, and its activations, come together organically. It’s all too common for ‘brand’ and ‘personality’ these days to get narrowly defined as social media copy and content; heck, sometimes ‘voice’ merely considers the tone of your tweets. But look around the Duke’s Mayo Bowl — what you see on the broadcast, the fan experience, the interactive activities around the game — and the consistency stands out, compounding the effectiveness of everything they’re trying to do.

And make no mistake, this all looks like fun and games (and it IS fun and games), but there’s a point to it all. It’s the synergy of putting all the elements together in harmony that leads to outsized results for the Charlotte Sports Foundation, its Duke’s Mayo Bowl, and the title sponsor with a twang (Duke’s Mayo, iykyk).

“There is the sponsorship fulfillment and we’re crushing it in that,” said Yoho, discussing the core objectives for his efforts. “Like, I think everyone sees Duke’s Mayo as a household name — and it was before in the South, but it’s expanded, and in the South it’s penetrated even more, and that’s due to their trust and awesome and incredible team.

“But also the payoff is the people going to the games, the engagement, what they’re doing, and creating a spectacle where the football game is still the most important thing, the people are suiting up and going — but we also created an environment where it is fun to go to. It’s different, it’s unique; it starts with social, but in the end, if you go in and people are chugging mayo and whatnot, it’s part of what we’re doing all the way and everything’s aligned.”

The terms ‘sponsorship’ and ‘partnership’ often get used interchangeably. But make no mistake, the best outcomes come from partnerships. From relationships that aren’t a transaction that results in an agreed-upon activation, but a collaboration that starts with a foundation, but builds upon it — through teamwork, through exchange of ideas, through reacting and evolving activations — working together to achieve results that benefit all sides. Look closely enough and you can start to tell them apart — the Duke’s Mayo and Duke’s Mayo Bowl is undoubtedly a partnership. That truth comes out in the way Yoho describes the year-round meetings for two games all year (the Duke’s Mayo Classic and Duke’s Mayo Bowl), the mutual trust and alignment of goals, and the results fans see culminate each year with the famous ‘mayo dump’ that serves as a symbol of all those conversations, strategies, and elements coming together.

Said Yoho: “I think everyone has seen this is, I would say, the epitome of what brand marketing via sponsorship should be. And what’s happened for them and what’s happened for the game.

“That’s what happens when you work in harmony together.”

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH MILLER YOHO

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Athlete Social Media, College

NIL Through the Eyes of an Athlete: Creating and Receiving Value that Transcends Dollars

For decades, star student-athletes enjoyed an elevated local or even national status. But besides maybe a generous portion in their Chipotle bowl or skipping the line at the club, there wasn’t much (legal) remuneration for being ‘big man on campus.’

And then name-image-likeness regulations were blown wide open and the student-athlete opportunity was potentially more lucrative than ever. If the amateur athletes seized that opportunity, built their brands, and became attractive to individuals and businesses willing to pay for access to their NIL.

But athletes pitching themselves is nothing new. Most college athletes on scholarships were building up and selling a product years before they stepped foot on campus — they were marketing themselves. As future leaders for a program, as strong ambassadors for the school, and as individuals that coaches would want to invest in. A star high school quarterback in the football-mad state of Texas, Chase Griffin, went through that recruiting process, and he recognized that student-athletes, working for college athletic programs that take in millions of dollars, are well-positioned for the new era of NIL activation.

“I’ve always thought athletes were built for NIL for two reasons,” said Griffin, who ended up going to UCLA to join a historic athletics program and institution. “One, we already generate so much revenue and value for the companies and in industries that are set up around collegiate sports. And then two, we’re by nature content creators. Every single person who’s in college right now either produced their own Hudl or had a coach or guardian who created their Hudl of content that they were doing on the field and they had to create their profile and put grades and put good works in there. Every single person who’s gotten to college has been recruited off of a highlight tape off of some type of reel.”

Griffin came into UCLA already having experience doing interviews, representing himself, and even engaging with brands at various events for awards. He was more than ready for the opportunities that the opening of NIL regulations afforded student-athletes like himself. It was those media engagements and self-awareness just as much as anything he could do on the field, though. NIL activities aren’t some inherent part of being a high-level student-athlete, Griffin said, and it’s not something that every athlete needs to or even can do well. It takes work, as any traditional ‘influencer’ or celebrity or creator can attest. And while student-athletes can now legally monetize their NIL, it doesn’t mean it’s automatic riches and deals for every athlete.

“I think not everybody has to participate in NIL. And the ones that do, it’s completely up to them how much time and effort that they put into it,” said Griffin, who has become a leader in the NIL space, particularly among active athletes. “But it is very much getting what you get out of as far as the time commitment. And the thing is, it’s less reliant on sport than people realize. There are folks who are extremely good content creators who are in gymnastics or who are in soccer, or who are in rowing that are getting deals because they know how to create a follower base and create content that is engagement-worthy, and brands recognize that.”

All of this is easier said than done. While some may have expected that the NIL floodgates would open with the loosening of the laws, that hasn’t been the case. There are plenty of headlines about student-athletes driving complementary cars, working with national brands, or booking six-figure deals — but those are much more the exception than the norm. Because it’s not that easy. Even if an athlete nails the content creator game — no easy feat, as Griffin described — there remains the challenge of attracting brands, securing deals, and somehow managing it all alongside a full academic and athletic schedule (and hopefully some of the more traditional ‘fun’ part of the college experience, too). It might as well be another curriculum for athletes hoping to participate in NIL (indeed, some universities now have classes related to the creator industry). There is another level of education available to student-athletes now, Griffin explained, and it will serve them well as students and athletes.

“I think a lot of athletes they see maybe teammates of theirs or people at other schools who play the same position or same sport succeeding and the thing is, they have no idea how it happens or they think there’s some trick to it,” said Griffin, who has done several brand deals, content collaborations, and also has a charitable foundation bearing his name. “And bottom line, the majority of college athletes haven’t done any cash deals, have earned zero $0 through name, image, and likeness.

“Those who are starting their own businesses in college, or learning through internships or work experience are getting arguably the best part of college during those college years and able to network. And athletes were [previously] barred from that…”It is no surprise that athletes who were getting these maximum contracts in the professional world were going broke because they were barred from participating in any type of business and then you give them the lottery. So now that NIL is here I think it adds to the cumulative nature of student athletes’ education while they’re still in school.”

Griffin is taking full advantage of that education and the opportunities he has as a UCLA student-athlete. And he’s doing so with intentionality about his brand and what makes his NIL stand out among all the other athletes, and individuals in general, that brands could work with. Griffin’s cultivation of his brand in the professional world has led to unique opportunities with businesses like Chase Bank, with whom he co-hosted the Zone In Podcast (alongside NFL player Kavyon Thibodeaux). It all aligns with Griffin’s aspirations of building a career in in the present and future with helping athletes to manage and create generational wealth. He started carving out such a path for his NIL and his brand fro day one, embracing a social network that isn’t the first that comes to mind for the creator economy.

“As soon as I got to UCLA, I built out my LinkedIn, which is really been a hidden moneymaker for me throughout NIL,” said Griffin, who went on to recommend that student-athletes get on the professional-focused platform, “just because I’ve connected with the right people, I’ve built a good following on there, and it adds a dynamic that a lot of other not just athlete creators, but creators in general don’t have.”

Griffin was also articulate in explaining how he wanted to represent himself. And those principles have continued to guide him as a creator, a student-athlete, a brand partner, and a human. Such an understanding and appreciation of his personal brand has clearly been a valuable asset for Griffin, as he described how it guides him and his endeavors.

“It’s really based off three things,” he said. “It’s my personal values. I consider myself a believer, a winner, a provider, and I look for other brands that mimic those values. Then two is the economic value — is the price and deliverables that they’re asking for on par with my market price? Then three is community value, where I find ways to parlay what the brand is about and their expertise and reach, as well as the money that’s coming in because of the deal, and then find ways to create community value.”

As Griffin continues to hone his brand and create value for himself and others, he recognizes how beneficial the holistic experience is for him. A lot of learning in college happens in the classroom, but there’s also a whole lot of education and growth that happens outside the classroom. For student-athletes, the new age for NIL is about much more than making a few bucks, it’s equipping them with skills that will serve them in life for years to come. And isn’t that what the college experience is all about?

“I have earned a good amount of money that I’m extremely grateful for, and have earned the ability to give money away,” said Griffin, who will have both a Master’s degree in education and another in legal studies by the time he’s finished. “But at the same time, it’s the experience that I’m most excited about because I’m creating, I think, a workable template for life that as long as I stay true to myself I’ll be able to continue growing as far as wealth creation.”

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH CHASE GRIFFIN

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College, Social Media

Inside /r/CFB — the Subreddit where College Football Fan Engagement Thrives and a Community is Sown

There’s unbelievable breaking news or a crazy game just ended — if you’re a sports fan, what do you do?

There are a number of options and many larger platforms have come and gone over the years (remember Facebook Stadium?). Some will go to their intimate group chat on iMessage or maybe Insta, some fans will tweet into the noisy timeline, maybe you’ll go and comment on the Instagram post from a news outlet or comment in the Bleacher Report feed — but some of the most engaged sports fans reside on Reddit.

This article is not a recommendation to drop everything and prioritize Reddit for a social media strategy; it’s a look at one of the most engaged sports communities everywhere, a subreddit that is just outside the top 250 subreddits in terms of subscribers but is often right near the top in average comments per day — /r/CFB, the college football community on Reddit.

In such a tribal sport, why do over 2 million fans subscribe to ‘The Internet’s Tailgate’ (as the subreddit calls itself) and what’s it like to manage and moderate such a vibrant, vehement community? Bobak Ha’Eri is part of the team behind r/CFB and has been there since the early days of the subreddit, helping to oversee the community as its growth has made things more fun, but more complicated. The result today is a thriving subreddit (and a brand that has extended to a Twitter account with hundreds of thousands of followers) that has had to professionalize, in some ways, but remains as irreverent and funny and entertaining as ever.

So what does happen when news breaks? When it does, Ha’Eri and his r/CFB co-moderators have to be ready for the tsunami coming.

“If you don’t moderate a website at all, you have total chaos,” said Ha’Eri, who had experience in message board moderation before /r/CFB, but on a much smaller scale in comparison. “With a college football section, one of the weird things that we get, which isn’t involving offensive material, is everybody’s going to try and post the same story as soon as it happens…”

The criteria for the /r/CFB when it comes to managing the deluge of content that 2.1M+ subscribers can bring, Ha’Eri explained, is: “Does it add to the conversation? Then maybe we’ll allow another one in. But it’s to also manage what I know most users would like. What we learn, because we sometimes will churn out surveys [asking] users what they want to have, and what they like about r/CFB is a variety of stories, including kind of the squirrely ones that people hadn’t thought of or heard of, is either a wacky thing at a minor school or just some kind of aspect…”

With a subreddit that big, it becomes necessary to have a more formalized approach to moderation, a framework that can guide the decision-making of the team of moderators that ultimately direct the traffic on /r/CFB. Ha’Eri has a legal background, so his mind sometimes thinks in such terms when considering moderation choices. The team behind /r/CFB has also organically developed an approach to leading the community and the brand. Because when you’re that big, there is power to wield. And, as someone once said, with great power comes great responsibility.

“[You] kind of trust [Reddit’s upvote/downvote] system, but at the same time, we have to play a more parental role,” said Ha’Eri, who fell in love with college football as an undergrad at USC. “And again, I’m really belaboring this, making it academic, but from a legal analogy, you know, that’s what the judge’s role is. The judge has to say, is this case enough to move forward to a jury? Is this enough where we’ve stated something that is a question that the law provides a remedy, so it isn’t quite that mind-intensive to be a moderator.

“We’ve always had that level of trying to keep some sort of level of equality between all of us with some respect for seniority and understanding. So then we created an executive committee of more senior moderators who always end up making the bigger decisions like should we move forward and make an LLC? Should we move forward and make that? So we’re not forcing [things] because I mean, you know, you might have up to 20 or 30 moderators [and] that can be onerous to try and get everyone on the same page. And also sometimes you need to move quickly.”

Even with a soft layer of oversight, it’s primarily the users and their upvotes and engagement that drive r/CFB. It is quite the cosmopolitan community; spend a few minutes browsing the threads and you’ll quickly have counted dozens of different college programs represented. Fans that make their way to sports bars IRL to watch the Saturday games will often go to the ‘Michigan’ bar or an ‘Ohio State’ bar, where they can be surrounded by fellow fans all sporting the same colors. And online, there are plenty of team-specific message boards and communities for college football fans, so why do so many eschew those more insular places in favor of the mixed town square on /r/CFB? It’s an interesting question posed to Ha’Eri, because college football is so tribal; it’s that passionate patriotism that makes the sport so special. But r/CFB has thrived because of, not in spite of, the melting pot.

Ha’Eri once found himself on USC message boards, but he’s come to recognize why so many fans flock to /r/CFB, often leaving their segregated communities behind. And it’s that intermingling that has made r/CFB so special.

“They have their own peculiarities oftentimes,” said Ha’Eri of the more team-specific platforms and message boards. “it’s a very concentrated community and they sometimes see feedback loops…Sometimes you get irrational views and it becomes an echo chamber, and that echo chamber feedback loop can be an issue. And frankly, sometimes you’re like, these people, I’m a fan, but you all sound crazy….

“r/CFB did something that’s hard to do,” he continued, “which is have a college football website that caters to all fans and can keep the peace…I think people like hearing from other fan bases. They like hearing news…”

As Ha’Eri noted in discussing the vastness of the /r/CFB community, there are over 130 FBS teams in college football, each with their own dedicated fan bases. Some fan bases are bigger than others, rivalries can get fierce, and power users can dominate the conversation if left unchecked. Ha’Eri and his colleagues know what makes r/CFB so special, though, and to hear him tell it is to understand that there’s, well, at least something of a method to the madness — underlying objectives that guide how they want to govern the community.

“Our official mission statement is ‘We’re a welcoming community that celebrates fun, camaraderie and creativity in all of college football,’” he said. “Because that is what we’re really about…r/CFB offers that kind of like, here’s all the news items that are kind of hot right now. Oh, but the fun thing is, here’s a community of people that love to make, usually jokes or interesting commentary and sometimes worthless commentary. But that’s what the the voting arrows are for…”

Beyond the mission statement, the alternative moniker of r/CFB feels so spot on for anyone familiar with the community. Because if Twitter once proclaimed itself as ‘the biggest virtual sports bar in the world,‘ /r/CFB really does feel like ‘The Internet’s Tailgate.’ A place where this plenty of passion and shouting, to be sure, but also the jokes and witty commentary to which Ha’Eri alluded.

To keep the analogy going, and to try and understand why so many fans go to Reddit, of all places, to expound and vent, there’s something special about the communal nature of r/CFB that stands in stark contrast to the noisy nature of shouting into the void on Twitter. Comment trees sprout branches upon branches on /r/CFB, conversation builds with others more so than the hordes of individuals ratio’ing the tweet of a team or reporter. Fans aren’t just seeking an outlet to scream, they’re seeking other fans. I’ve noticed, at eventful times, fans going to Instagram and commenting en masse on the team’s most recent post, even if it’s from several hours ago like a photo of the team in warm-ups. That’s the pull that Reddit offers. Because whether it’s the game thread or the postgame thread, the r/CFB ‘tailgaters’ go to their college football town square to say their piece, knowing others are waiting to do the same — and react and engage with others.

“Some people, I swear, have been sitting back as the game is going on and [thinking] like, I know what I’m going to write in the post game,” said Ha’Eri, who has helped grow the @RedditCFB Twitter account to over 330,000 follows, partly by sharing some of the best /r/CFB posts and comments. “They’ll write something and happily hit F5 [to refresh] over and over again the moment it appears…Sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s hilarious, sometimes it’s a lot of frustration. But it provokes conversation because the way the comment section works is they’re all comment trees based off a top level comment.”

As fans come back week after week, game after game, day after day, something starts to happen — community forms. Ha’Eri and his moderator team mostly sit back and let fans start conversations and go back and forth with each other. It’s seeing that play out which is so heartening to Ha’Eri and why all the (unpaid) work that goes into keeping it going is worthwhile. Because while there may be biting jokes, maybe even some name-calling — it’s all fun at the end of the day and it’s a community that transcends any differences in team colors, accents, and borders. There’s something life-reinforcing about that, at the risk of hyperbole, reminds us about the inherent power of community that sports embodies. That’s the magic one can see in r/CFB.

“It’s a part of the [college football] culture. We’re used to ranting at each other or making funny comments,” said Ha’Eri. “We found our strength is a community and the users that come to us and what makes them useful is that people bond over the sport.

“Sport is is beyond politics. It’s beyond [this or that]. It’s joyous, it’s fun, and if you hopefully have a healthy relationship with it, you know, ultimately it’s silly and frivolous.”

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LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BOBAK HA’ERI

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College, Digital, Sponsorships

How Putting Fans First Guides Georgia Athletics Social Media Strategy and the Lessons from That Philosophy

At its heart, sports marketing and fan engagement is about the fans. Putting oneself in the fan’s shoes, serving them what they want, and remembering why fans are fans in the first place. The north star doesn’t need to be overcomplicated.

So while sitting at the helm of a historic, beloved institution like the Georgia Bulldogs, the athletic programs covering 21 teams for the University of Georgia, is a daily challenge, Jen Galas keeps the main things the main things — and that’s the fans and student-athletes. It sounds pretty simple listening to Galas explain the program’s social media philosophy.

“From a strictly social side, I think at the heart of it is we want to make sure that we give our student-athletes the best experience that we can and we want to make sure our fans get the best experience that they can get,” said Galas, the Assistant Athletic Director – Social Media and Digital Strategy for The University of Georgia Athletics. “So a lot of the stuff we do is driven to promote our student-athletes and our coaching staff and also make sure that we provide a top-notch experience for our fans. Not only the fans who come to Athens and come to games and are here in person, but also the ones who aren’t or can’t and making sure they know that they are also important to us because they very much are.”

Fans want to feel valued. Student-athletes expect to earn an education while making lifelong memories. But we are a goals-obsessed professional culture, chasing tangible outcomes. In sports that often means revenue — ticket sales, merchandise, donations (for college athletics), and sponsorship. While those are an important part of any sports business (more on that later), all of those revenue streams are fueled by genuine fandom. Without emotional investment, there is no financial investment.

So, for Galas and her colleagues, they know their first objective is to foster the fans. Everything else stems from that.

“Our job is to give somebody a bit of entertainment, a bit of joy when they’re scrolling through their phone or whatever,” said Galas, who has been at Georgia since 2011. “So I don’t know that you can draw a direct line [of fan ascendance] — I think it’s great to say you want somebody to follow you and then come to a game and then buy a mini plan and then buy a season ticket and think that in a dream world, sure, I think everybody would want that track, but that’s not reality. It’s just not. So I hope that happens sometimes.

“But I also think treating our fans very equally and putting ourselves in [fan’s shoes]. You’re like, ‘Well, what would I like to see? What would entertain me? What would make me happy? What do I want to know?’”

The focus on intuiting what fans want doesn’t mean Georgia Athletics doesn’t establish strategic goals that guide their execution. But it’s that focus that serves as the north star, the one unchanging philosophy; virtually everything else is subject to change, evolve, improve, or adjust in service to that powerful proposition. It’s easy to get sucked into pleasing the platforms, but it shouldn’t be done at the expense of having the fans at the center of it all. Goals that are too rigid can lead to a chilling effect on creativity and the ability to continue focusing on fans.

“Goals can change in the beginning of and throughout the year,” explained Galas. “They can and they should, especially in a medium that’s new and changes all the time — and when I say new like relatively — but that changes every day and something changes and happens every day, so your goals should change.

“Personally speaking, if I set and said this is the one thing we want to accomplish all year and if that’s the only thing I focus on, that means we’re probably slacking off somewhere else. Something else is suffering because of that.”

There are some things at a generationally important institution like Georgia Athletics for which change and evolution must be treated with care. And the growth of social media, with each of those 21 teams having its own Instagram or Twitter or Facebook, only made looking after the history and brand more challenging and important. Because while the fans and the feel of Georgia baseball, for example, may be different from that of Georgia women’s basketball or Georgia football, they are all their own entity but part of a powerful collective whole that is the Georgia Bulldogs.

If that all sounds a bit complex or even convoluted, that’s because it’s not easy. Fans are multi-generational. Platforms evolve. Programs evolve. And for Galas and her colleagues, the responsibility of keeping Georgia looking like Georgia while allowing for necessary evolution is a tough job.

The big puzzle is the identity of Georgia Athletics, and each one of our sports is a piece of that puzzle. So we have 21 sports, so there are 21 pieces to this puzzle that makes up everything,” said Galas, who oversees the Bulldogs’ ‘digital identity,’ among her other remits. “In an ideal situation, all of those fit perfectly together. So when you look at it as a whole, you’re like, ‘Oh shit, yeah, that’s Georgia.’

“Especially on social graphics, it’s the square with the G in it and that’s pretty much on every single thing that we do, and making sure that we don’t go nuts with every team having 27 fonts that they use…making sure that when we go into a process it’s number one, what’s the reasoning? And number two, how can we make this as Georgia as it can be? And I think especially in the last couple of years we’ve done a really nice job of giving people some identities but also saying we know how far to push it and then we know how to bring it back and I think we’ve done [that]

“I think for a while it was very one size fits all, which I think can work, but I also think there’s a couple of different approaches you can take to it. And we just sort of said ‘Wait a second, let’s have some fun with it, and let’s play around with some things.’”

The way the puzzle pieces, across the board, is starting to become clear, isn’t it? When the north star stays in place, everything else is easier to decipher and execute. That includes the increasingly integral way that sponsorships get activated on digital and social media. Georgia Athletics ensures the fan experience and value prop is at the center of sponsored social, too. It makes sense for all parties — the fans get a great experience (always the primary objective) and the partners see a better performance of their activation.

It all sounds good to say out loud, but what separates the best ideas from the most successful are thoughtful, laid-out plans. For the Bulldogs, that takes the form of a consistent, reliable ‘menu’ of activations — content they can be confident their fans want and will enjoy that can be tailored for sponsors. Galas was articulate in describing their sponsored social strategy, which aligns with the overarching philosophy that has been the motif of this article.

“I think we try to do kind of the menu of [sponsorship opportunities on social] saying, ‘Hey, these are the things that are tried and true that work. Sell these first.’ If somebody has an idea, let’s talk about it. Let’s not just blindly agree to it because sometimes it may not be possible, but I think we try to say like, here’s the menu, pick from the menu, this is available inventory,” Galas explained. “We have an inventory sheet for season-wide things, we save some things for one-offs that we oftentimes don’t sell for like a season-long campaign in case somebody wants to jump in the middle of the year we kind of hold some back for a couple of different reasons.

“But if there’s really great ideas — I mean we’re not opposed to any great idea, but we also want to make sure that — nobody wants to see a million ads on a channel that you like. Nobody wants to see it. 

“So how can we incorporate our partners in something that’s going to resonate with our fans and make them click or make them watch through for the whole thing or make them engage in some way.” 

When every idea starts with the fan at the center, everything else just falls correctly into place. There are often competing incentives and a lot of noise in devising and executing social media strategy, but even as one gazes up at a sky crowded with lights, there’s always that one shines a bit brighter, that always guides the way — that’s the north star, and in sports the north star is the fan.

LISTEN TO THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH JEN GALAS