Athlete Brands

This course is designed for students from any discipline who wish to understand how athletes can develop, activate, and monetize their brands to achieve their short- and long-term goals. The content sits at the intersection of sports management, brand management, and marketing and provides students with a toolkit that will help them create, support, and advocate for superior athlete brands. Specifically, they will accomplish the following objectives:
1. Increase awareness and understanding of important issues in creating, activating, and monetizing athlete brands that help athletes achieve their goals.

2. Understand the critical importance of aligning resources (e.g., time) with goals.

3. Strengthen brand-assessment ability and gain proficiency in being able to critically assess brand essence statements.

4. Understand the value of brand synergy—aligning a student athlete brand with that of the team and school/university to magnify impact.

5. Develop skill managing social media strategically, identifying risks and creating “guardrails” that can protect an athlete brand.

6. Learn how to craft superior athlete brand statements and develop “activation plans” that align behavior with a desired brand image.

7. Develop skill in creating a monetization plan that supports goals and a desired athlete brand.

8. Develop a complete athlete brand plan: Goals, brand essence statement, activation plan, resource-allocation plan, and monetization plan.