Grown Up Thinking

If I were in the sports marketing department at Northern Iowa, I’d be working overtime (no pun intended) to get my basketball coach on Facebook and Twitter by, like, yesterday. Your school just knocked off a giant in the NCAA Tourney and now you’re the trending topic of the week. Embrace it.

How many opportunities does a small school such as Northern Iowa get to have millions of people reading, watching and talking about them? Schools are businesses, and businesses need to build their brand in order to attract new customers (or in this case, students).

A school and coach that’s doing it right? Check out Kentucky’s Coach Cal. He has over 138k fans on Facebook and over 1.1 million Twitter followers…WOW. I imagine there are a couple brands that would pay good money for that type of online community.

How many of those Facebook fans are high school students still deciding on which school they will attend? How about potential basketball recruits looking to get to know the coach? He even goes on to promote a Nike contest that the University of Kentucky is participating in to help rally votes and get the University more exposure.

So, Ben, even though your Panthers crushed my dreams of bracket supremacy by defeating Kansas, I forgive you and would like to offer you a bit of advice if I may:

Please, speak to your marketing department and ask that they set you up with some social media networks pronto. The world is listening and you’ve just signed a big ol’ 10-year contract extension to stay at Northern Iowa (congrats BTW) – better start building that brand while you have our attention.

The arrival of March means many things. Winter coats are being tucked away into the backs of closets, flip flops are making their premature debut and the buzz of March Madness starts in offices, apartments and dorm rooms across the nation. This year, Hulu (the commercial-supported website that streams video of TV shows and movies) is partnering with Entertainment Weekly to put its own spin on the traditional basketball tournament by sponsoring a voting-based Best In Show Tournament.

Voting opened on March 1st and the ultimate champion will be crowned on April 5th with the prestigious title, Best in Show. While it’s still too early to predict the mass popularity of the competition, I think Hulu is doing a great job of providing unique interactive ways for its users to stay connected with the site beyond streaming video. One drawback: I do not see a sharing feature anywhere on the site to share the competition and my votes within my social networks.

And for now my predictions: I think Glee and Family Guy will showdown in the semi finals against Lost and 24. Ultimately, I think Lost will take it, appealing to a wider fan base than my beloved Glee.

Anyone care to make a wager?