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This article appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Champion magazine.

Brand new leagues

Conferences make their marks through new branding campaigns

By Gary Brown
NCAA.org

To test your knowledge about conference brands, answer true or false to the following:

• The University of Chicago is a founding member of the Big Ten Conference.  
• The Big Eight Conference is the predecessor of the Big 12 Conference.
• At least one of the six original members of the Western Athletic Conference is still with the league.
• Fresno State is a member of the Mountain West Conference.
• The primary purpose of a conference is to provide regular-season and postseason opportunities for regionally proximate schools.

Feeling pretty confident?

OK, Chicago was indeed a founding member of the Big Ten in 1896 along with Purdue, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Northwestern. Perhaps the more intriguing question is not whether Chicago was a founding member but what took Ohio State so long (the Buckeyes didn’t join until 1912).

Many might assume the Big Eight preceded the Big 12. While the eight did indeed help found the 12, don’t go claiming to the Big 12 office that it is the offspring. It doesn’t recognize the Big Eight as kin.

As for No. 3, no founding members of the WAC remain affiliated. No conference has undergone more change and still kept its original name.

Fresno State is one of those current WAC members, but only for another year, at which point it will indeed become part of the Mountain West family.

And as for No. 5, well, it probably depends on how old you are.

The conference shuffling of the past two years – in all three NCAA divisions – has reshaped the landscape of intercollegiate athletics like an interstate through a one-horse town. And who’s left to direct traffic? The conferences themselves.

That’s why managing a conference’s brand is more important now than ever. The last thing conferences want is for fans not to know who’s in them. But as they say, sometimes you can’t tell the players without a scorecard – in this case, a brand-new scorecard.

“The fact that we’re even talking about conference ‘brands’ and ‘brand marketing’ and ‘re-establishing brands’ shows how conferences have changed since the early 1990s,” said the WAC’s Karl Benson, who took over the reins of that league in the mid-1990s just as it was going through one of its most dramatic metamorphoses, doubling its membership to 16.  

Benson said when the Big Ten adopted Penn State and the Southeastern Conference added South Carolina and Arkansas to get to 12 teams and a football championship in the early 1990s, conferences began transforming from regionalized families into entities that might as well be on the finance channel crawl. 

“Conferences went from being service organizations to sport properties,” Benson said. “And revenue distribution became the priority. Commissioners went from being rules interpreters and championship managers to business people – essentially CEOs of major sports properties.”

That means being brand managers, too. Most conferences these days employ an experienced professional marketing staff.

While it’s hard to find a conference that hasn’t been affected by membership changes in the past 24 months, five in particular – the Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12, Mountain West and WAC – have faced significant brand challenges. They’re not the first to experience a membership makeover, but they do make for fascinating case studies in brand management.  

What’s in a number?

Perhaps no conference brand has been stronger over time than the Big Ten, even though the conference hasn’t consisted of 10 members since 1989, a year before Penn State came aboard as the league’s 11th member. Now, of course, the Big Ten has 12 with the addition of Nebraska this year, but the name – and by extension the brand – is still the Big Ten.

Outside of the Ivy League, the Big Ten is the oldest conference and among the most academically grounded. Its original name, in fact, was the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives, which more than symbolically reflected its members’ research roots. Adding Nebraska didn’t hurt.

“It did not change our mission or our message,” said Diane Dietz, the Big Ten’s chief communications officer. That mission is to excel athletically without compromising the priority that member institutions assign to their academic standards and to their commitment to student academic success. It’s a lofty principle, to be sure, but Big Ten schools have managed to look pretty good on resumes for more than a century.

With that kind of brand equity, it has never made sense for the Big Ten to change its name, though its mark has been redesigned, including the clever post-Penn State positioning of an “11” in the white space between “Big” and “Ten.”  The post-Nebraska logo also is a bit sleight of hand, with the name and number all in one B1G image (which has gained traction with the social media crowd).

While membership changes haven’t caused the Big Ten to completely re-brand itself, Dietz said the launch of the Big Ten Network in 2007 came close. If nothing else, the expanded publicity and promotion platform brought terms like “brand integrity” and “brand evolution” to the fore, she said. But because efforts have always been about “extending” rather than “adjusting” the brand, Dietz said there was never a need for conference officials to state a primary goal other than consistency.

What adding Nebraska caused was cosmetic more than anything else. With 12 members, the Big Ten introduced a divisional format and an inaugural football championship game this fall. But even the names of the divisions – Legends and Leaders – reflect the brand, Dietz said.

“The Legends Division honors our past, while the Leaders Division looks optimistically to our future,” she said. “Both are consistent with and true to our mission: to celebrate the many accomplishments of Big Ten student-athletes (Legends) while continuously reinforcing each of our member institutions’ high academic standards and commitment to student academic success (Leaders).”

Membership additions also divisionally divided the updated Pac-12 Conference, but officials there went with the traditionally directional “North” and “South” distinctions for football. 

That’s not the only thing different about the Pac-12 and the Big Ten. Unlike its Rose Bowl rival, the Pac-12 has never been shy about touting its number. From Big Five and Big Six to the Pac-8, Pac-10 and now Pac-12, the name has always been mathematically correct.

“Utah and Colorado aren’t playing in the Pac-10; they’re playing in the Pac-12, just like Arizona and Arizona State weren’t playing in the Pac-8 in 1979. They made us the Pac-10,” said Danette Leighton, who joined the conference in April 2010 as its first chief marketing officer.

But adding Colorado and Utah did cause a seismic brand shift that was directed by Larry Scott, who succeeded longtime leader Tom Hansen as the league’s sixth commissioner in July 2009. Scott began a comprehensive review and analysis of the Pac-10 as a whole and as a brand, including hiring a branding consultant to execute market research with key stakeholders.

Responses consistently identified three attributes. One – excellence – is supported by the fact that the Pac-12 has won more NCAA championships than any other conference. The league in fact registered No. 400 in June when Arizona State won the Women’s College World Series.

That total jumps by 42 with the addition of Colorado and Utah. Members of the Pac-12 have won titles in 27 different men’s and women’s sports. The conference has led the nation in NCAA championships in 45 of the last 51 years and finished second five times.

Like the Big Ten, the Pac-12 brand also carries plenty of academic oomph, boosted by national icons like California, Stanford, Southern California, UCLA and Washington.

Research also identified the “pioneering spirit” of the West as an attribute. 

“I’m a big believer that your brand is what your consumers think it is,” said Leighton, whose Pac-12 credentials are fortified by being an Arizona graduate whose father played baseball at UCLA. “It was evident in our research that we could pull all of those key themes – West Coast, innovation and excellence – and everything we do is defined by those three brand pillars. They guide everything from how we manage championships to how we execute branding programs to how we define things as simple as membership meetings.”

They also drove what the conference wanted to portray visually. The league’s new logo is in the shape of a shield – a device that Leighton says represents academia and excellence – and incorporates Western and West Coast imagery of a mountain and a wave to define its footprint.

The Pac-12’s brand campaign paid off – literally. In May, the league announced a 12-year television contract with ESPN and Fox that is the most lucrative of any conference in college sports. The contract, which will begin with the 2012-13 season, is worth more than $220 million per year and about $3 billion over the life of the deal.

As WAC Commissioner Benson alluded to earlier, that’s what’s in a number. 

A league of its own

One of the most jolting conference realignments in college sports history came in the mid-1990s when four members of the Southwest Conference (Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech) joined the existing members of the Big Eight (Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State) to form the Big 12.

That not only ended the Southwest Conference but also the Big Eight, even though some people think the Big Eight became the Big 12. From a branding perspective, not so, says Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe, who just completed his fourth and perhaps most tumultuous year as the league’s leader.

And now Beebe faces the same branding conundrum with number and name that the Big Ten and Pac-12 did.

Beebe jokes that he proposed a name trade with Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and was rebuked. But in all seriousness, the brand equity of the Big 12 – despite its relatively short lifespan – is enough to maintain the 12-member name for a 10-member league.

“There isn’t much interest right now in trying to overhaul our brand or our name,” Beebe said. 

Like the Pac-12, the Big 12 just completed its re-branding study, as well. Not surprisingly, the Big 12 brand is rooted in its region.

“There are unique characteristics in this region that are reflected in how we balance athletics and academics, having a lot of passion for our teams and also being connected with each other after the games are over,” said Beebe, who was commissioner of the Ohio Valley Conference from 1989 to 2003 and an NCAA national office staff member in enforcement in the 1980s. “There’s this Midwest/Texas type of hard work and perseverance that our student-athletes exhibit. All of that is reflected in our institutions that represent this part of the country.”

As for the new 10-member brand, the Big 12 is in the unique position of discarding its divisional format and football championship rather than adding them. Beebe believes that adds to, rather than detracts from, the brand.

“Our membership is actually excited about being a 10-member conference and having the opportunity to decide championships fairly on the fields and courts,” he said of the league’s new round-robin opportunity in all sports. “We will be advocating a new position now that we are different from the other conferences that have increased to 12 or were there already.”

The Western footprint

While Beebe kidded about a name trade with the Big Ten, the WAC’s Benson said a fan whimsically wondered recently what the name “Western Athletic Conference” would be worth to the Mountain West.

It was no joke in 1998 when half of the 16-member WAC (Air Force, Brigham Young, Colorado State, UNLV, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah and Wyoming) split to form a new range called the Mountain West. But even 12 years later, in some people’s minds the Mountain West may be more like the Western Athletic than the WAC itself. Thus, the brand challenges for each.

The WAC’s brand situation may be the weirdest (some would insert, perhaps cheaply so, the term “wackiest” here, but that doesn’t set well with Commissioner Benson). When Benson, who like Beebe cut his teeth at the NCAA national office as a compliance representative and assistant director of championships, became commissioner of the WAC in 1994, he took over leadership of a league that now has just one school (San Jose State) left among the 16 that welcomed him. 

In fact, since the conference’s founding in 1962, 27 institutions have claimed WAC membership, including charter members Arizona, Arizona State, Brigham Young, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

And now the WAC is changing again, with Boise State, Fresno State and Nevada heading out and Denver, UTSA, Seattle and Texas State heading in. 

Even though WAC membership has been a revolving Rolodex, its brand has been cultivated as that of a conquering underdog. Benson said the league’s greatest moment may have been when Boise State knocked off Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl on a last-minute trick play. The USA Today headline was banner for the brand: “Getting WAC’d.”

Now, Benson said, he’s using that David-beats-Goliath image to the league’s advantage.

“Who will be the next Boise State?” he said. “Ten years ago when Boise State joined the WAC, nobody expected them to reach the level that they have. It serves as an example of what conference affiliation can provide either a new or existing member. One thing that has sustained the WAC brand is that when teams join the conference, they get better – we’ve seen that time and again.”

And as the signature football programs rotate out of the WAC, that leaves room at the top for the five existing schools and the two incoming members with football to contend for a championship, go to a bowl and get more TV coverage than they’ve had before. 

“As we’ve talked to potential members, we’ve stressed that this is a great time to join the WAC, especially for football,” Benson said. “This is a conference that still has name recognition and brand recognition – it may not be your father’s WAC, but it still has a connection for people.”

So does the WAC’s younger regional rival (some would say sibling), the Mountain West. It is the newest of the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision conferences and as such was presented a unique branding challenge. Now, after a little more than a decade of letting the original brand simmer, the league introduced a new mark and a new campaign in June.

After exhaustive research, including interviewing 1,500 fans at the MWC basketball championships, and surveying more than 8,000 fans, boosters and key alumni of member schools online, Mountain West Associate Commissioner Dan Butterly said, “The new brand shows we’re as much Mountain as we are West, which is different from our previous mark.

“Fans believe the conference is on the upswing, even though our membership is changing,” he said. Indeed, Brigham Young and Utah left the Mountain West on June 30, but the conference added Boise State on July 1. Next July 1, the MWC loses TCU but adds Fresno State and Nevada in all sports and Hawaii in football.

Not only does a conference like the Mountain West face regional brand challenges but also national. Being among the so-called “non-BCS” conferences is an ongoing brand battle.

“But you can’t necessarily compare your success to that of the AQ conferences in the BCS,” Butterly said. “From our perspective, it’s ‘we belong,’ even though we’re just barely on the outside looking in as far as being an AQ. That’s one challenge that we have to face every day until either we get that AQ status or the BCS system changes.”

While the BCS system may or may not change, odds are that the conference landscape will continue to evolve and demand that conference leaders keep their brands relevant. It’s a strategy that not only makes sense but also dollars – lots of them.

“The priority placed on generated revenue hasn’t necessarily replaced the typical conference mission, but it certainly has repositioned it,” Benson said. “Whether it’s TCU going to the Big East or Utah to the Pac-12, schools are shaped by their alignment with the BCS and thus their ability to be in conferences that generate more revenue and distribute more to their members. 

“Conference membership, at the high end of Division I, is about the year-end distribution – that has become the primary purpose. We all still state that our primary mission is providing regular-season competition and championships in a geographic area – historically, that’s certainly what conferences were created to do. But as schools move from one conference to another, the reasons typically are for greater resources, television and bowl opportunities – and at the end of the day, bigger year-end checks.”