Intercollegiate Forum: Brand Activation And Marketing
Day two of the 7th annual IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum presented by SportsBusiness Daily/SportsBusiness Journal kicked off with a panel titled, “Brand Activation and the Marketing of College Sports.” Panelists included Coca-Cola North America Dir of Sports Marketing/NCAA Team Valerie Kravitz, AT&T Dir of Corporate Sponsorships Tim McGhee and Electronic Arts Dir of Sports Marketing Brian Movalson.
The issue: What is the current college consumer like and what does that mean for your brands?
The skinny: Kravitz: What’s unique about the college consumer now is just how smart they are and how the consumer is changing. … And they kind of direct us. We don’t go onto a college campus and start doing a marketing program. They kind of tell us what they want. It seems like they’re always one step ahead of the Coca-Cola Company.
Kravitz: Something that we do different is that we don’t do as many individual programs as we were doing before. We focus a lot of activities around total NCAA championships and then take it down to the college level.
McGhee: When you look at the college student, the one ubiquitous thing that they always have with them is their mobile device, … so there’s an opportunity for us to engage with them at that point in their lives and develop a lifelong relationship with them. … It’s not a growth industry anymore, … so you’ve got to work very hard to connect with them in a way that’s meaningful to them.
Movalson: The college consumer has changed (because) instead of just being a consumer of marketing, they now are in many ways a publisher themselves with things like Facebook and all the different ways that they communicate now. We’ll have an event and before you know it, they’ll be sharing video of the event, they’ll be posting their photos from the event. There’s just that instant viral piece of what we do, and we all have to tap into that.
The issue: How do you tie in retailers to some of your on-campus programs?
The skinny: Movalson: We’ll do an event that drives students out to that event and, in turn, hopefully interact with our product.
Kravitz: We tie in everything at retail, where we traditionally sell our products and we’ve been very successful with that. … Everything we do is about retail.
McGhee: If you look at the college and university deals that we have on a local level, they can drive traffic to retail. … When you bring it up to a national level with our deal with the NCAA, that is something every year we do on a national level through our 3,200-plus company-owned stores. It does work.
The issue: How is the economy affecting your marketing/sponsorship budget?
The skinny: Movalson: It’s going to be a challenging year ahead. We’re doing fine. It’s just a matter of showing that growth. From a budgeting standpoint, it’s going to be tough to get an increase.
McGhee: We are taking a cut in our budget. As of right now, I would say our spending across our college platform will remain at the same level as it was in 2008 because it’s that important to us. … It doesn’t mean we’re going to stop looking at opportunities because money tends to find good ideas.
Kravitz: I’m glad we’re not renegotiating anything right now with the NCAA. We feel good that we’ll remain flat or close to flat for activation around NCAA championships. … For us, it’s just about making smarter choices. We’re not necessarily looking for new deals right now. We’re trying to figure out with what we have currently, how to make it work harder for us.
The issue: True or false: There will never be a true college football championship.
The skinny: Movalson: I just don’t see it happening. It’s not going to happen.
McGhee: I agree.
Kravitz: I agree, but I’m not sure I can support that. I’d like to see that.
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