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This field-based case introduces students to the challenges of building a professional brand through the lens of a college athlete. Since the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA’s) landmark decision in 2021, college-level student athletes have been able to monetize their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Brian Gursky is finishing his collegiate pitching career at the University of Virginia after playing for four years at the University of Southern California and earning a business degree there. He hopes to play professional baseball, and his backup plan is to work in business. Gursky realizes that he might not have been fully leveraging social media to achieve either of his professional goals. Students investigate Gursky’s tweets and assess what they communicate about him to potential scouts, coaches, NIL sponsors, and business recruiters. They learn that as athletes (and students) seek to become more professional, they need to use social media not as a vehicle to communicate with friends but as an advertising and promotion platform to establish their athlete or professional brands. This case is well suited for undergraduate and graduate (e.g., MBA) courses in core marketing, marketing strategy, sports marketing, sports management, advertising, promotion, strategic partnerships/alliances, brand management, or brand strategy. It can also be used in executive education courses to help business leaders identify, analyze, and recommend improvements in leveraging social media to build a professional brand. Finally, athletic departments can use it to introduce collegiate athletes to the rules and protocols for conducting themselves appropriately in today’s high-pressure collegiate sport environment.
This case will help students understand the following: (1) the brand essence statement: what it is and how it relates to an athlete or celebrity brand; (2) the relationships among brand strategy (i.e., brand essence statement), activation efforts, and a brand image; (3) the difference between using social media to communicate with friends and leveraging it to build a professional brand; and (4) the role of a “brand manager” in developing a brand strategy and bringing it to life.