To Sue Donohoe, NCAA vice-president for Division I women's basketball, and members of the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Issues Committee, that was unacceptable.

"All this time we've got this great product called women's basketball, and we've allowed anybody and everybody to define what it is and what distinguishes it," Donohoe said. "So the issues committee and the women's basketball community said, 'It's time for us to define it.' "

What has emerged after more than a year of intensive study is a powerful marketing campaign that officials hope will put a distinct brand on the game.

At the core of that brand are five attributes that define the sport:

• The student-athletes play a fundamentally sound game.

• The game features high-quality competition.

• The student-athletes are amazing role models for young children.

• Women's basketball provides a family-oriented brand of entertainment.

• The student-athletes demonstrate a high level of sportsmanship.

A list of qualities associated with the women's game began with a study by Taylor Research Inc. in September 2002. A series of focus groups that included student-athletes, coaches, administrators, fans and other stakeholders were conducted to determine the positive aspects of the game. Then last spring, the NCAA membership -- through an online survey of ADs, coaches, marketing directors, basketball committee members, assistant coaches, commissioners, senior woman administrators, student-athletes and sports information directors -- voted on the characteristics that the research identified as representing women's basketball.

The resulting core attributes are the building blocks of a multi-media campaign designed to tell the story of women's basketball. The campaign includes a tool kit for on-campus marketing professionals, and a brochure and DVD detailing how to promote the sport using the five attributes that women's basketball represents.

Reaction to the campaign from basketball issues committee members has been overwhelmingly positive. One of them, Bernadette McGlade, associate commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, said she believes the campaign provided a strong foundation.

"Any time the NCAA can put together a tool kit or a working model that institutions can use, it's an asset for that particular sport," McGlade said. "Women's basketball has an influx of athletics administrators in the marketing area and this will be a great help to them."

Unified approach

NCAA staff members presented the initiative to the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) in April. Carolyn Schlie Femovich, executive director of the Patriot League and chair of the Women's Basketball Issues Committee, said she is just beginning to hear feedback from the presentation.

"What we heard from the coaches has been positive. I think we're still in the beginning phases of the roll-out, and I think that the activation plan is going to be essential," Femovich said.

Mary Eiland, NCAA associate director of promotions and events, said the initiative is designed for implementation across all three NCAA divisions, and it provides an activation plan for institutions and conferences at all levels. Officials expect Divisions II and III institutions to be particularly pleased because marketing professionals in those schools typically are happy to receive assistance and participate in an initiative with a national scope. The campaign is expected to be adopted Association-wide, though perhaps not overnight.

"If everybody focuses consistently on the same message, we will grow the sport as a whole," Eiland said. "The goal is to turn the casual women's basketball fan that might watch some women's basketball on television into a big fan that adopts a favorite team and supports women's basketball as a whole."

The campaign also hopes to target youth and encourage men's basketball fans to become fans of the women's game as well, Eiland said. The Taylor research indicates that people who played the sport or were interested as youngsters are more likely to become fans later in life.

Many officials believe that relaying a consistent message to the media is the key to strengthening the campaign. Beth Bass, CEO of the WBCA, said that to be successful, the initiative has to receive buy-in from all women's basketball coaches.

"That coach, that's my business -- making sure that mentor, that educator, that role model has a platform on campus not just to talk to players, not just to talk to the administration, but to talk to fans and actually get outside the core audience, get out into the community," Bass said. "We need to make sure that they are on message when they're speaking to their beat writer or at a press conference -- whether it's one on one or 30 electronic media people and 15 beat writers," she said. "We've got to start staying on message and making sure that we're educating the media."

Sending the message through the media will help achieve the consistent messaging that officials believe is necessary. McGlade likened the national brand of women's basketball and the marketing campaign to the NCAA's relationships with its corporate partners, which help the Association project a uniform image.

"You want to be known consistently from New York to North Carolina to California. I think that's a strong attribute that this unified-representation effort will bring," McGlade said.

Many stakeholders see growth in the future for women's basketball, with the campaign playing a key role in that expansion.

Bass said that while the evolution of the campaign could be a long process, it will represent a cultural shift for the media. Now, she said, many reporters look at the women's basketball student-athletes as a great feature story or a "feel-good" article.

"They've got to understand the quality of play, the athleticism of our student-athletes and how fundamentally sound we are, not just that we're great role models," she said. "That's all important, but that's what really hit me, how we've got to portray our game to the media."

Femovich said that obtaining buy-in from those intimately involved with the sport at all levels is crucial to the campaign's success.

"The NCAA has committed staff time and a significant amount of resources to this branding initiative," she said. "As we now get into the activation stage, it's essential that all of the stakeholders, but particularly those of us directly involved with women's basketball at the conference and institutional level, get behind it and work aggressively to implement the activation plan."

If those things happen, she said, the marketing campaign will take the women's game to new levels of success, though she cautioned that it won't happen overnight. To reach the level of success officials know is possible will require dedication to sending a unified message about women's basketball.

"This will require commitment, persistence and involvement over a period of years before we'll really see the fruits of our labor," Femovich said.

Creating a strong brand for women's basketball also will benefit the student-athletes, institutions and conferences by bringing the sport into the spotlight many feel it deserves. The game's recent growth already has given more exposure to figures in the women's game, such as Pat Summitt, head women's basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and student-athlete Sophia Young from Baylor University, each of whom had unique media appeal during the tournament. McGlade thinks the publicity upswing is bound to continue.

"As additional exposure is created, additional opportunities for girls to participate at a high level will bring more revenue to individual institutions, to conference offices via their conference tournaments, and to the NCAA with the national championship tournament," she said. "Those resources will again allow the sport to grow even faster than it has in the last 15 years."

To be sure, at nearly 25 years old, women's college basketball still is considered the "new kid on the block," McGlade said, especially when compared to the men. But she and others believe the initiative to create a unified message about the sport will make a big difference in the next 25 years.

"Certainly, NCAA basketball has established a level of excellence, as has NCAA football," McGlade said. "To brand NCAA women's basketball is only going to help the sport grow. The campaign is strong -- it identifies well with the sport of basketball, and it's really going to be something that will work quite well."