USA Track and Field "Stop Crippling"

Recently, Nick Symmonds has attracted alot of media attention with his campaign to challenge the national and international governing bodies of track & field to “stop crippling” the sport by limiting an athlete’s ability to feature the logos of multiple sponsors on the competition uniform. This raises a bigger, more general question about the marketing and promotion of the sport that USATF addressed this week in a move that has, itself, has gained a lot of attention.

After years of issues and difficulty between the governing body of USATF and the Athletes themselves, the athletes are starting to take actions. With the very minimal commercials lately and drastic drop in popularity of the sport, officials at USA Track & Field have decided to take a new approach by hiring an external firm to restructure its marketing and communications efforts. Some have questioned the way they went about hiring Max Siegel Inc., as well as the potential conflicts of interest with the principal, Max Siegel, being a recently departed board member. Still, the more important question for USATF members and athletes is, can this move finally put track back on the map?

You don’t have to be a professional track & field athlete or even a serious fan to know that the marketing and promotion of the sport and its stars has been a challenge of late. Gone are the days of national advertising campaigns that featured our sports biggest names. With the exception of one or two international athletes, the average citizen wouldn’t the recognize images of America’s track stars, even when they consistently top the podium in major competitions.
Four-time world champion and Olympic gold medalist Dwight Phillips, he said he is optimistic that any change is good change.

“I think it’s going to work. When I travel to other countries what I notice is that no matter if someone is a runner or a thrower, if they’re winning they are on everything. The more the public sees us out there, the more interested they will become in watching and supporting us.” While Dwight did mention that moving toward the NASCAR blueprint of numerous sponsorships for individuals would give us a shot at the earning potential of other professional athletes, he also concedes, “We’ve got to start somewhere, this is a positive step.”

Following Post came from here:
http://blog.gotracktownusa.com/2011/10/24/dwight-phillips-weighs-in-on-usatfs-bold-bid-for-change/

Nick Symmonds created a Facebook group about crippling Track & Field:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/groups/162889787132224/

Nick Symmonds FULL Argument:
http://www.flotrack.org/blog/38650-Im-Tired-of-USATF-and-IAAF-Crippling-Our-Sport

UNI Panther Town Hoops

http://www.panthertownhoops.com/
 (Visit this site first)

This interactive micro site put together by UNI's marketing department is being used to build excitement for the Men's basketball season along with selling season tickets, group tickets, and mini-plans. On the posters this year they put a bar code that leads you right to this site if you have a smart phone with a bar code scanner. The video that plays when you first get to the site was produced by Mudd Advertising (@MuddInc to follow them on Twitter). They have been alot of help with Panther Athletics and their marketing campaigns in the recent years. They have helped build the "Panther Town" campaign dating back to last year. It is nice to be able to work closely with a local advertising agency. Even though Mudd is know more for their car commercial advertisements they sure do a great job with athletic promo videos as well. The women's basketball have also been able to work with Mudd this season and last. Last years video involved both men's and women's teams in the same video, now this year they have separated them and made two separate videos.

Last years video:


The making of the the 2010-2011 Basketball Panther Town video:
Bryan McCarty (Copy righter, Creative Lead)
Aaron Smock (Motion Graphic Artist, Animator)
Jason Fiehler (Post Production Coordinator, Editor)

Informational Video for UNI by Coach Dan Steele

Living in Iowa people know about the University of Northern Iowa and are able to visit campus, and see what it has to offer. If prospective students are from other states or countries they might not know of UNI or may not be able to come to visit. These prospective students most likely want to know what life would be like at the University of Northern Iowa. The best way is to come to campus and find out for yourself, but with a informational video like this, students can see what it would be like from the comfort of their home. This doesn't mean this video is more effective then going on a campus visit or coming to Cedar Falls to see what campus is like. Coach Dan Steele is informing those interested about why he likes UNI and the Cedar Valley so much. Pieces like this can be very good informative tools for the program and University as a whole.

Dance Craves at Universities in the Midwest

Now a day kids like to move, and grove to music which some people call dancing. In the past couple years dance phenomena's have poked up at different universities such as Wisconsin with "Teach me how to Bucky" and at University of Northern Iowa "The Interlude". These dances quickly caught on and spread across campus like a wildfire.

Myself being a student at UNI the Interlude started out as a crazy dance a few friends came up with, then blossomed into a crazy dance that we now do at MANY home sporting event, Volleyball, Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball, and now Football games! At first it was just a few people in the student section participating in the dance, then the whole student section, and then a couple of kids and other fans in the arena, but NOW almost EVERYONE gets up and does "The Interlude". The dance has been spotted on YouTube at other campuses across the country, the military people in Afghanistan, Germany, China, and many other countries around the world.

This may not seem like Advertising for sports, but it has help bring the excitement of UNI athletics to a new height that it has never seen! Attendance has increase especially in the student section along with the general public. It is amazing how such a simple little dance can bring so many people together.

Take a look at how the Interlude Began:



Interlude at UNI Men's Basketball Game



Interlude Dance at UNI Football Game:



Take a look how Teach Me How To Bucky:



Official Music Video of Teach Me How To Bucky:

Live Twitter Updates During Sporting Events

Twitter has become very popular for different athletic teams to help update their fans about how the current game is going. Less televised schools and sports can utilize more then more popular sports, and bigger schools. Many times university sports such as volleyball, soccer, hockey, tennis,track and field etc aren't televised and with the power of twitter and its ability to have live updates helps keeps fans in the loop. @Flotrack uses this to update its followers about track meets that their staff are at all over the world. Also @UNIathletics uses this to keep fans informed throughout various sporting events.

Along with live updates, you can also advertise an upcoming event with twitter. Hash-tags (#) and shout outs (@) are a great way to reach out to different groups and audiences.

Athletic programs can also interact with their fans if they hire a Digital Advertising person to manage Twitter and other social media networking tasks. This could be very beneficial to an organization because followers really like to interact with their favorite teams. Twitter can be a benefit but also takes a lot of work to keep it updated and effective.

Follow me @unitrack08

University of Northern Iowa Football

In my first post I am going to touch on something close to home, UNI Football. Our football team worked with Mudd advertising to produce a really cool commercial to promote the season, team, and season tickets.

Mudd advertising is located here in the Cedar Valley. They mainly work with car dealerships but have been able to work with our athletic program the past couple years with Football, Basketball and overall advertising for our Athletic program.

The ad below is from the 2010-2011 season. The concept of Panthertown was a big advertising campaign for the university. Every teams poster had Panthertown on it. Now this year we still have kept the Panthertown, but also added We Are UNIted.



I believe both of these campaigns are great ideas and have helped increase interest in UNI athletics here on campus. They have helped with anticipation for the season and are very neet graphically and also vocally.

If you would like to check out the current advertising campaign, you can visit the UNI website at www.unipanthers.com The front page before you get to the first page changes depending on what time of year it is and what is currently going on that is important, but currently it has the Football promotional video on it.

A lot of universities around the United States rely on their main athletic website to promote and advertise their athletics and all the different events that have going on. Websites are a great place to start, but not everyone accesses the website on a regular basis. So next time I wil talk about how different universities use Facebook to help advertise, and then following that Twitter.

Digital Advertising In Sports

Hey everyone, this is my first post to see if everything is working.
In my blog I hope to inform you about different things that universities and professional sports are doing to advertise their team through Digital Advertisement. If you have a question or request you would like me to find out please feel free to post it and I will do my best to find out an answer or example for you!

But first, Congrats to the 14th ranked University of Northern Iowa Women's Volleyball Team on their win against 12th ranked Iowa State University!



Look at having my first real post up here in a day or two.