The impact of athletic success on higher education institutions

In a nutshell, athletic success absolutely has a positive, lasting and far-reaching impact on a university’s brand, academic reputation and ability to attract students. All students – not just athletes.

Take a look at the story links below as you will see, most are based on fairly sound assumptions and some have data to support a hypothesis or assumption. If you would like more in-depth information and data, please watch or log into the Google Hangout on June 6th.

Now, let me break down each of the above bullet points and either show or explain what we found after this year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament and the University of Louisville’s National Championship.

  • Athletic success attracts a larger audience than most other higher education areas of interest, research or news media.

    This isn’t always the case but look at your school and ask yourself how many departments, events or activities can generate 50,000 fans for an event more than five times a year or, how many can produce an average of over 18,000 fans a night, 20 times a year? Now, how many of them can generate hundreds of thousands or millions of television viewers, in addition to the attendance? Not very many, if any. Schools with strong music, performance or event schedules simply can’t compete with the level of interest equivalent to sports.

    I was interested in comparing other major, non-athletic, events that have occurred at UofL since I have been here to see how something such as a major research discovery compared to a major athletic event. In short, they don’t. National media attention for a major research discovery likely won’t beat your regular season or post-season games and they are dwarfed by something like a National Championship and neither come even close to an event like Kevin Ware’s horrific break.

    Comparing Google Trends results: Rob Summers vs. Louisville's National Championship and Christopher Reeve's passing vs. Kevin Ware's broken leg

    The above graphic compares Google Trends results for Rob Summers (a paralyzed man who has started to signs that he may walk again. Research done by University of Louisville researchers.) vs. Louisville’s National Championship and below it, the passing of “Superman,” Christopher Reeve vs. Kevin Ware’s broken leg.

    After pulling these results I started to wonder: how does our sports exposure compare versus public figures (good and bad). Here’s what I found:

    Kevin Ware vs. President Obama – Obama has only surpassed Kevin three times, since 2004.

    Kevin Ware's infamous broken leg compared to Barack Obama, The University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky (back-to-back National Champions)

    Then I looked up the top searches and people in 2012 to see how they compared to Kevin’s accident. Here is where Kevin really gets trumped.

    Kevin Ware's infamous broken leg compared to some of the 2012 most popular topics

    Kevin Ware's infamous broken leg compared to the 2012 most popular people on Google Trends; Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Taylor Swift.

  • Traditional and new media tend to have a greater reach with athletic success than they do with other areas of success within a university.

    This is simple math. When you have hundreds of thousands or millions of fans who are passionate about something and follow it regularly, you simply can’t compete with one-hit-wonders or successes in less-passionate areas of interest. The Rob Summers story from above is a good example. A paralyzed man is starting to walk again and it doesn’t even show up on the radar, compared to normal university media or athletic events.

    At first this saddened me but the reality is, unless you know someone who is paralyzed, are paralyzed or are in the medical industry, this story probably didn’t do more than raise an eyebrow for you. On the other hand, if you come out with a cure for cancer, invent something that changes the way the world works or do something like start Facebook…then you have the potential to dwarf athletic exposure. Look at schools like MIT and Harvard as examples of less-athletic but nonetheless top-of-mind institutions. There is a reason for it, they produce life-changing research, products, start ups, ideas and theories and do so on a very regular basis.

  • Those who follow or are fans of athletics programs can be more vocal and stronger advocates than those following or supporting other areas of a university.

    This is interesting because during any sports season, sports fans are more vocal and stronger advocates than any academic promoter, especially if you look at how much engagement (volume) and/or the percentage of engagement vs. the number of fans (engagement %). During the off-season though, academic fans remain consistent in their passion and engagement levels, while athletic fans go dormant. You can call them fair weather fans, but it is simply the nature of sports and sports marketing. Obviously your super-fans will continue throughout the year and usually don’t reduce their level of engagement but academics has the same dynamic with their super-fans (yes, they do exist for academics).

    What does this mean for marketing academic messages? Promote academic successes and benefits during sports seasons in an attempt to identify and adopt more of your academic-interest fans. But don’t try to convert sports fans to academic fans. It will kill your long-term numbers but you can leverage athletics to identify those who are interested in the academic mission and vision of the school.

  • The connection between an athletic program, athlete and those affiliated with them is much more fluid and easily accessible, than most other areas in a university.

    The volume of sports fans, athletes and people connected to them is substantial compared to specific areas at a university. In most cases only the largest schools in a university will compete with the size of a sports team’s base of influence. This means that your ability to connect with someone associated with a sports team is much more likely than trying to connect, network or engage through academic channels.

    Since sports fans come in all shapes, sizes makes and models, they can be effective if you want to market and promote the benefits of your department/units academic success. That doesn’t mean you need to pay them to advertise (although that may help) in most cases it just means that you should look for opportunities to get sports fans to recognize academic successes.

    For example: I run advertisements almost any time our sports teams are in an Elite-8 or Final Four situation. The ads promote the academic achievements of the team (usually their GPA or the academic all-Americans).

    • Promoting academics

    • The Ad: #1 Louisville Men’s Basketball has a 3.28 GPA. The Ville, where students & athletes thrive – links to our microsite: http://uoflnow.com
    • Goals: 1) improve academic reputation 2) student apps 3) reconnect and find alumni 4) branding – NOTE, I’m not going to share result stats with you on all of these because I don’t have them all yet.
    • Target: sports fans, specifically NCAA. A subset of this campaign specifically targeted media, blog and news professionals and did not promote a click, just the exposure of the stat.
    • Numbers: Spend: $172.99, Reach: 212,069 ($0.82 CPM), 442 clicks ($0.39 CPC). The high CPM is because we wanted the media target to see the stat at least 5 times.

    I also encourage every department in the university to congratulate, acknowledge or cheer-on the athletes that are in their program. Not to attract sports fans, but to connect academic fans to the school/program through their sports connections. Leverage freebies like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram to do this.

  • athletic success is sustainable for a longer period of time than other areas of success in a university

    Let me clarify this because there is a huge difference. Only major, National Championship-level success and athletic events close to it are more sustainable than your academic online marketing efforts. Louisville’s retention level on social media for academics is about double that of athletics. That sounds large but in reality, neither side has a huge attrition rate (both are below 0.01%/mo. on average). Athletics does lose more fans than academics (by %), in part because of the fair weather fans but also because people simply switch teams or ebb and flow between them.

    Case in point: in 2011, UofL was knocked out in the first-round of the NCAA Tournament. It wasn’t a bad year, we made the “Big Dance” but it also was not a great year for us. We saw expected spikes in fans, engagement, exposure, etc. The numbers weren’t great but they were strong.

    In 2012, UofL made it to the Final Four in an unexpected run which culminated in a game against our state rival, the University of Kentucky. We were an underdog in the tournament and nobody expected us to make it past the Sweet 16. The fact that we were underdogs was huge (I’ll talk about that later) and the overall exposure helped bring Louisville’s national exposure to what may be a point of critical mass among sports fans. Making it to the Final Four is important because it divides sports fans into four regions or camps, instead of eight or 16, which usually end up being regional attachments.

    Our 2012 numbers were nothing less than spectacular. Most of our academic stats compared to 2011 had increased by over 447% and some were well over 1,500% growth (Improvements were in impressions, new likes, reach, engaged during the same period). The same was true with Athletics. They had increases starting at 572% and exceeding 1,800% compared to 2011. Both had reach increase in excess of 32,000% increase but this is pretty bogus because Facebook didn’t have a grasp on their analytics at this point.

    2013 was interesting because we weren’t an underdog and had already hit critical mass in 2012 so our relative comparison doesn’t actually look as good, even though our raw and overall numbers were spectacular again, the rates of growth were not as high, even though we won a National Championship. Don’t get me wrong, our “new fan” growth in 2012 was 447% higher than 2011 but in 2013 we only had a 437% increase in “new fans,” still not bad for an academic profile.

  • audiences are more likely to respond to admissions, fundraising and sales ‘asks’ during, immediately following or just before an athletic success event than most other times of the year.

    I post about admissions, fundraising and merchandise throughout the year on our academic profile and see athletics do the same. Not surprisingly, the most effective time (for clicks, I’m not sure about income numbers yet) for all of these calls-to-action is during the most passionate and successful moments of a teams tournament. Our most successful posts in these categories are posted in close proximity (1-8 hours) to major, memorable and icon moments in the sport. Timing is everything with these posts. You want them to occur when people are amped and excited, without detracting from your other planned athletic or academic posts.

  • academic profiles that leverage academic success tend to keep new “likes” or followers longer than athletic profiles. Academic profiles are stickier, although they are not as passionate.

    I’ve already talked about this above. Our academic fans engage more over time because they remain consistent and remain fans longer than sports fans. If you target your academic fans (or those interested in your area of study), who are also interested in sports, you will see much greater success and sustainable fan growth. If you try to promote your program to sports fans generally, you should expect a different demographic profile for your resulting fan-base.

  • major events can become disconnected or opaque to the university or brand if it involves a third party. This is not always bad and if left alone, for organic growth, can be very powerful.

    One lesson we learned this year is that a very public and grotesque leg injury can go a long way and most of that journey does not include the university’s brand and that’s not bad. Kevin Ware’s injury grew into a pop-culture phenomenon for several reasons (I elaborate on this in a Google Hangout). One of the things we noticed is that the first two-to-four hours after the accident, everything included “Louisville” or some association to the school. After that short period the Twitterverse, FB and other social networks dropped the school connection and simply made it about Kevin, which is the way it should be. We intentionally stepped away from trying to inject UofL into all of those conversations. The story was about Kevin and his emotional/spiritual/personal experience and it resonated with everyone in some way. By not trying to inject a “UofL” or “Louisville” hashtag into many of those major conversations we let Kevin have his moment and weren’t leaches to the story.

    We knew this was a missed opportunity. We could have replied or retweeted many of the celebrities, online personalities and political figures, injecting our brand hashtags but that isn’t who we are or who we want to be. We let it be all about Kevin and enjoyed the benefits of the whole thing, which were still huge.

  • underdogs often outperform top-dogs when you compare percentages of engagement, growth and other forms of interaction.

    I am a numbers guy, so when UofL won a National Championship on a global stage and I didn’t see ridiculous improvements in all of your numbers, I questioned why. It didn’t take long to figure out. In short, here is what I found and if you want the numbers behind all of this, join the Google Hangout – which should be called 15 minutes of findings and 45 minutes of murder by numbers.

    • You would have to reach a Final Four-type event to achieve national critical mass on social media and this would be required repeatedly as social network popularity changes. For example, you would have had to reach the Final Four during the days of Classmates, then MySpace, again for Facebook and again for the next social network. You would think they would all simply migrate but that isn’t the case, sometimes they need a reminder that they are fans or need to know where/that you exist on a new network.
    • Fans engage more, are more passionate and are less critical if you are an underdog. Our positive vs. negative sentiment ratios in 2012 vs. 2013 are very different. As the #1 seed, everyone wants to see you go down, although some of these stats are skewed because many of the negative sentiment words were used to describe Kevin Ware’s incident and were tied to the university for a short time.
    • Academic-minded people like underdogs more than top dogs. Whether this is because we were hitting critical mass or we triggered our closet sports fans to “Like/Follow” is not clear, but our academic growth rate as the underdog was 60% stronger than as National Champions, although both were good.
    • Stats / fan base total

      Per-user stats, Final Four vs. NCAA Championship

      Being an underdog isn’t a bad thing. Our fan productivity during our run to the Final Four was stronger than our run to the National Championship, even though our overall numbers were much greater for the Championship.

  • critical mass, when it relates to social media profiles, is real and will impact growth rates but it can also have a positive impact on engagement and relationship-building (potentially fundraising, sales and other forms of direct response)

    One factor that skews the numbers in the graphic just above here is that our 2012 season was a critical mass season and 2013 was not. We need another championship, in close proximity to the last one, to see if this is truly a factor but having looked at a LOT of numbers over the last three years, I have some confidence in the theory that the journey toward critical mass can be attributed to what will look like inflated numbers after you have reached that point. This doesn’t mean your numbers will diminish or that you cannot be successful, it just means that rates of growth may be tough to exceed in future efforts.

    Critical mass also means that you have reached a large percentage of your target population, which is a good thing. Now you can refine your message, further refine your target and focus, focus, focus until you are leveraging and engaging with your audience in the most efficient ways. This is also a point where you can question your target and possibly change direction, although I would never recommend doing that until after you have accomplished everything you can from your original target population.

  • athletic followers are usually less educated but more passionate, onerous and willing to share/promote their team/brand. The sheer volume of fans is likely why the education levels are lower, it doesn’t mean that educated people don’t follow sports, it is simply what happens when you scale a population.

    Based on data from Facebook’s analytics API, LinkedIn, surveys, contests and promotions we have done, we know that the athletic audience is, by over a 10% majority younger, has attended some college and skews male, between ages 13-45. Academic profiles are slightly different in that they are, by a majority, college graduates and their age distribution is closer to the standard social media profile with a gender distribution closer to norms of 52-54% female. In both cases, the female population ages 13-30 are almost always the most actively engaged although males dominate during prime events. In our athletic profiles the actively engaged, female population is a much smaller margin than academics. In fact, in our academic profiles, it is common that the female population between 13 and 30 years of age is the most actively engaged almost every day of the year (in 2012 they were only beat once, by the same age males. In 2013 there were 3 days where the same-age male population out “engaged” them).

  • PRADs works! PR advertising is an effective way to drive messaging (advertising directly to public relations, news, media and blogging professionals)

    In 2012 and 2013 we actively targeted the media with messaging about our Men’s (or Women’s) Basketball Team GPA. We focused on people in the media profession (influencers), news casters, sports casters, broadcast professionals, radio DJs, news anchor people, sports bloggers, reporters, sports writers and similar professionals.

    Our goal wasn’t to have them click and go to our microsite (http://uoflnow.com) but to see the stat, in hopes that they might repeat it online, in print or over the air. In both years we heard and saw the stat repeated (most of the time verbatim to what we had written) in print, on the radio and on television. We had more attention from it in 2012, including a mention by Dickie V on national television.

    For less than $150 each year, we were able to promote academic excellence, the university brand and hopefully helped increase the overall academic reputation of the university. In 2012 we spent just under $150, 2013 was under $100. The difference in costs was because of reduced prices on social media ads but also learnings from 2012 and improved targeting.

In conclusion

Louisville sets a new high in Kentucky. More interest than the previous year's championship and prior years successes for the two schools

Louisville sets a new high in Kentucky. More interest than the previous year’s championship and prior years successes for the two schools

Note:
I have worked in higher education for a whopping three years. Most of my 17 years of work experience has been at dot-com companies or consulting companies on how to leverage digital media. I am no expert in higher education but have a strong background in business, operations and technology. When I came to the University of Louisville, I tried (and still try) to wrap my hands around how business is done at public institutions and more importantly, how to track and report on a business model that is rather foreign to me. I hope the above post was helpful and insightful. As I continue to track and follow the impact of athletics on academics, please feel free to reach out to get my latest findings.

About Jeff

Director of Digital Marketing at The University of Louisville. http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffr/ http://www.facebook.com/rushton
This entry was posted in Digital strategy, Galleries, News, Social Media, UofL, Video, Web and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>