NCAA Tournament Basketball Marketing: What we can learn from #12 Seed Cornell

We continue our evaluation of this year's NCAA Tournament field, from a marketing point of view. We're in search of inspiration - things that all of us can take and apply into our worlds. And, for fans, of each team, that's a look into what makes you special.

Thus far, we've reviewed top seeded Kentucky, #2 West Virginia, #3 New Mexico, #4Wisconsin, #5 Temple, #6 Marquette, #7 Clemson, #8 Texas, #9 Wake Forest, #10 Missouri, and #11 Washington.

Now it starts to get really interesting: Let's check out #12 Cornell.

East #12 Seed Cornell (link here)

What's Inspiring about Cornell Athletics Marketing?

A couple of years ago I went to a Drake basketball game (my alma matter) and was impressed to see that they were allowing journalism students the chance to film the games and thus get experience doing something that would hopefully one day be their career. It created something valuable for the fan (better video action of the games in arena and online) and it created something valuable for the students (real world practice!)

Cornell takes this philosophy and brings it to their website in two big ways...

1. A student-created iPhone app

Really. I saw a post on the Cornell site (shown below) asking me to check out their iPhone app. I was skeptical. I've seen a few iPhone apps out there that are simply $4.99 investments to be able to take the content you get for free on the website with you on your mobile. That sucks, as schools should be pumped you are interested in taking this with you - not see that as a revenue driver. But I guess I get it, as it costs money to produce one.

Enter Cornell.

As you can see "This application was developed by a team of student programmers taking the CSS150 project course."

Wow.

Not only did this cost the athletics department very little (if anything), it created serious value for the students, the school (for allowing this experience to happen), and the fans. Seriously this is inspiring stuff.

My only challenge or question is can they build upon this? Can future teams of students be challenged to add features to this app, taking advantage of technology as it evolves. Fantastic stuff.

2. A student-created Facebook page

Many schools and conferences leverage young people to man their Facebook pages. That's smart, as these people are those most familiar with Facebook and thus most able to connect with fans. Naturally there needs to be a partnership with the "old guard", as the young people may not have the experience in building a brand that would be needed for success.

Again, enter Cornell.

The Cornell Big Red Fan Page (linked here) was "created by the Cornell Sports Marketing group in order to keep you updated and excited about the sporting events around campus."

Nice.

The content is pretty good, including Cornell Basketball Cribs (your chance to see how the Basketball team lives). And it comes from a student voice so it is young and on target.

How could it get better? There needs to be consistency (it's a bit tough to decipher the pattern of what goes up and when) and it should probably feel like the posts are coming from Cornell Big Red, rather than from an individual student. I'd also love to see a lot more use of photography (only 3 photos right now). But all in all this is a solid project, again creating experience for the student body that benefits those of us on the outside.

3. Coach Donahue on YouTube

Coaches Shows. Just about every school does them, but we don't really see a lot of them. Cornell puts theirs out on the Athletics YouTube channel, here.

How could this be better? Take the student learnings and apply it to this. Let's have the journalism school produce the show, developing a schedule and style. Take what's working elsewhere on the site and apply it here!

I hope you've enjoyed this one! We'll keep moving through the tourney bracket tomorrow.