The Atlantic 10 Conference's Ultimate Basketball Marketing Mashup

It's time.

I was inspired by this ESPN article from a while ago, where ESPN constructs the perfect NFL backup quarterback. (What do you get when you mix Doug Flutie's likeability with Kyle Orton's Resignation?) And that led me to the challenge. How can we go through the next wave of conferences and construct the best online experience?

Here's the ground rules:

1. Can't use more than one thing from any school.
2. Every school has to have a presence in this (similar to the MLB All Star Game which keeps the Royals with at least one member each year)
3. This combined Franken-online experience has to mesh together as a recruiting and connecting weapon, as best it can.

Let's go.

I will start my experience with La Salle. I love their alumni talking about experiences on campus. Every college is blessed with alumni who loved their time on campus. When you play at a school, it just becomes a part of your DNA, in a good way. (I will forever bleed Drake University blue) But for some reason, very few schools leverage their alumni. La Salle is beginning to touch on this in a section titled "In their words." (Side note: this is an example of a great section with a title that doesn't clearly let you feel what it's all about. I'm not sure anyone would get that In their words is an alumni endorsement area...) As you'll see below, they elevate the emotions that Bill Raftery feels about La Salle. Link here.





St Joseph's gives us the ability to customize our home page experience by sport. As you can see here, there is a small menu at the very top of the page that let's you choose which sports show up. Now, unfortunately, that only controls the ticker of scores and schedules at the top of the site. But to me, that is the start of something powerful -- the ability to create my own basketball-centric experience on an athletics site.



Saint Louis gives us a close up look at their basketball facilities. As you can see below (or by clicking here), Saint Louis does a pretty solid job of letting us see what the arena experience is like. Facilities plays a big role in the student athlete's decision. But I'd go a step further. I'd say it is an environment, not facilities, that make that ultimate decision. So, while I LOVE the panoramic tours below, I would love to see what these are like in a packed environment - visually, and in audio of course!





George Washington does a nice job of stating what their basketball program is all about. To be specific, I'm taking Coach Hobbs talking about his philosophy (shown below, linked here). This is from the heart, a look at the kind of player and person he wants in his program. It is powerful copy, and I know it's tough to read so I'll paste a sample here:

"When I go out and recruit a player to be an integral part of my program he must have a burning desire to accomplish four things. Number one, he must have a burning desire to graduate with a degree because education is important to be successful in life. Number two, he must have a burning desire to win, and I am talking about conference championships and dreaming of winning a national championship. Number three, he must have a burning desire to improve as a player and a person. I take great pride in working to develop my players on and off the court. Number four, he must have a burning desire to want to play in the NBA. I want players who are willing to work hard and commit to chasing their dreams. If he doesn't have those four things, then I am not the right coach for that individual. "

Now that we've established who we are as a program (thanks to GW, SLU, La Salle, and St Joseph's), we need to track how this philosophy evolves through a season. Enter the world of social media.

The key infrastructure to all of this is a nice, crisp way of following your program. So I'm adding Rhode Island's Social Media Icons and Callouts to make it clear and easy to follow our program.

Rhode Island, as you can see in the images below, creates bold callouts for blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube and makes them very easy to find on the site.


Then, once you click in, they add a layer of motivational copy or calls to action. (Read our Blogs! Become a Fan! Follow Us! Watch our Videos!) Solid foundation here.


Now that I have a foundation, we need to fill it with the best content. From Charlotte I'm taking their blog, a Touch of Green, which I believe is one of the best blogs in college basketball, the Touch of Green. This is one of the most original, smart, and interesting blogs I've come across. It feels like a reporter (in a good way) mixed with a true insider. Here's a sample:

"When Junior Byron Dinkins hit his first of two three-pointers in the first half against UNC Wilmington, Feb 1 1988, he unknowingly set in motion one of the 49ers most remarkable streaks. (The MOST remarkable is the 61-gmae home winning winning streak from 1973-1977, but that's another blog.) The previous game, Jan 30 at South Florida, Charlotte went 0-for-3 from three-point land. Nearly 22 years passed before the 49ers would again go without at least one three-pointer.

With Dinkins three with 8:02 left in the first half, the streak was begun. The 49ers would hit at least one three-pointer in the remaining 52 games of the 80's, in all 302 games of the upcoming decade of the 90's, all 311 games of the still distant 00's, and four games into the 10's. The streak would span four decades. In game five of 2010, Charlotte would go 0-for-7 from three-point range against St Louis and the streak - the 669 game, 21 plus year streak - was broken"

Just fantastic stuff, and you can't help but want more.



From Richmond, I'm taking their YouTube channel. You can step into a deep YouTube video barrage here. Essentially this is a basketball channel inside the Richmond Spiders Athletics YouTube page. And they fill it with everything from weight room video to highlights to press conferences to ESPN coverage. And you can subscribe for basketball-only content! Huzzah!


We're building our Facebook presence with St Bonaventure. The Bonnies have a Facebook fan page that is, well... fun. (link here) They have just over 1,500 fans, and they pepper these fans with trivia questions on the program, contests, and video highlights of the latest games. Fun stuff.





We're taking our Twitter presence from Xavier. Simply put, Xavier kills it on Twitter. The Musketeers hit you with one of the deepest Twitter lineups I've seen. Head Coach Chris Mack, Assistants Pat Kelsey, Orlando Ranson, Travis Steele, Jeremy Growe, and Sports Info Director Tom Eiser are all out there. (Wow) Coaches Mack, Steele, and Growe are very active. As you can see below, there's a powerful image of Coach Mack (which should probably be a group shot of everyone, really) to hype their presence. Now if they can take that combined energy and unite it together, look out.




I love how Temple taps into the Atlantic 10 conference's social media presence. Temple comes at you with a Social Media directory that merges both the Owls platforms and the Atlantic 10's platforms. Nice. Why not elevate yourself by tagging onto the footprint the conference is building?



Fordham expands their news coverage of programs to include the mainstream media. I really liked this touch. Why not add to the coverage you have of the teams by dropping in stories by columnists from local papers? (And why not think about adding stories from your opponent's papers too?)


UMass builds on this philosophy, by integrating Local Media TV highlights. So now, basically, fans of the Minutemen can watch the local CBS Sports Highlights right from the comforts of the UMass basketball page. Really nice.



Duquesne puts together a basketball highlight package and inserts it into the hoops home page. This is smart, as it sets the tone quickly when you land on the Duquesne hoops page. Granted, it's a set of highlights from last season but it is still powerful imagery that is extremely well placed.


And, finally, Dayton builds their basketball brand via Go Dayton.com. This is an amazing experience that will no doubt get discussed later in this blog. But for now, I'll call out my one thing.


What I'm taking from Dayton is their ability to group photos and videos in packages that are easy to digest and share. From a photos standpoint, they created a Flickr page, linked here, that makes it really easy to find an image and take it with you.


And the topics of those videos: The Bond, Academics, Players on Coach Gregory, Work Ethic, and Team Depth. In words and visuals, it's very clear what Dayton stands for.



And that's it. Hope you dug this journey. The A-10 has allowed us to create a deep basketball experience, share it, and keep it fresh and updated through the season. We'll revisit the conference team-by-team at a later date, but for now, we're going to keep rolling.

Come back next week as we turn our attention to the next conference.... In the meantime, want to stay in touch? You can follow me on Twitter here.

Andy