Another angle on school PR

This past Saturday, the Texas A&M football team unexpectedly beat #1 Alabama, the program that was widely expected to win this year’s national championship. The Aggies went into the game as a 13½ point underdog and emerged as one of the most talked-about teams in the NCAA.

It was a huge win for the university—not just in terms of a great sports moment, but for the institution’s overall brand and visibility on a national level. The game drew a Nielson rating of 6.6 overall and a peak of 9.8 during the last 15 minutes of the close game. In plain English, this means nearly 10% of the total 114.2 million television-equipped households in the United States were tuned in. Not 11.4 million people—11.4 million households.  

This kind of an audience obviously gives Texas A&M amazing publicity. According to a recent article in the Texas A&M student newspaper, The Battalion, “the media coverage surrounding the A&M-Florida football game [in early September] generated an estimated $6.5 million in exposure.” And that was before the football team had played a single game.

So what does football have to do with academics?

 “We’re very unique in higher education in that we have a consistent identity between athletics and the University,” said Jason Cook, Texas A&M’s vice president for marketing and communications. “So the same logo that’s seen on the side of the football helmets, seen by an average of 4.5 million people on a national SEC broadcast, is also used by the University. It’s used by every college and division on our campus. Brand consistency is where you have the greatest impact.”

This consistency has been in place since 1999, when the university launched its Vision 2020 “institutional evolution,” a strategic and comprehensive plan that maps out administrative priorities. Brand and marketing are embedded in all aspects as part of the plan’s “culture of excellence.”

But, admits Cook, moving to the nation’s most visible athletic conference sure didn’t hurt.

“For too long, Texas A&M has been seen as a regional institution within the state of Texas,” he said in an interview in July. “I think a lot of that is because of our athletic conference affiliation, whether it was in the [Southwest Conference] or even the Big 12, which is concentrated in a thin sliver in the center of the United States.”  

In 2011, the Aggies’ previous conference, the Big 12 (which they left to much controversy last year), averaged only 2,347,000 viewers per college football broadcast. The SEC conference averaged about 4,447,000 viewers. That’s an extra 2 million viewers every week—and that’s JUST for football.

 

"It's interesting that [as] part of our deliberations in the conference move, we never did talk about what our football record was going to be in 2012," Cook said. "This was truly a brand move for Texas A&M. Just like the University of Texas wants the Longhorn Network to expand their brand, we believe that the move to the SEC provides the opportunity to expand the Texas A&M brand on a national level."

Or as “Gig ‘Em Nation,” the Aggies’ official ESPN blog, put it: “The Aggies hope to use the national platform that the SEC provides to educate the nation on their university. From its academics, to research, to athletics and its fan base, Texas A&M is looking to show the country what it is all about.”

At least one academic researcher says that the athletic brand does translate into academic growth. In his paper, The Benefits of College Athletic Success: An Application of the Propensity Score Design with Instrumental Variables (mentioned in a 2012 Freakonomics blog), Michael L. Anderson says:

For FBS [Division I Football Bowl Subdivision] schools, winning football games increases alumni athletic donations, enhances a school’s academic reputation, increases the number of applicants and in-state students, reduces acceptance rates, and raises average incoming SAT scores.

The estimates imply that large increases in team performance can have economically significant effects, particularly in the area of athletic donations. Consider a school that improves its season wins by 5 games (the approximate difference between a 25th percentile season and a 75th percentile season). Changes of this magnitude occur approximately 8% of the time over a one-year period and 13% of the time over a two-year period. This school may expect alumni athletic donations to increase by $682,000 (28%), applications to increase by 677 (5%), the acceptance rate to drop by 1.5 percentage points (2%), in-state enrollment to increase by 76 students (3%), and incoming 25th percentile SAT scores to increase by 9 points (1%). These estimates are equal to or larger than comparable estimates from the existing literature.

I’m not sure how the Aggies going from 7-6 last year to a projected 10-2 this year raises incoming SAT scores, but I’ll take the other benefits any day.

Oh, and by the way, the money’s not bad, either. Cook says that “since Texas A&M announced its move to the SEC, licensing revenues have increased by 27 percent, compared to an average growth of 7 percent by our peer institutions.” Add to that the extra $3.4 million in conference revenue sharing,  the increased alumni donations, sponsorship deals, ticket sales and other income, and you’ve got a brand strategy with impressive ROI—not to mention a lot of very happy fans.