Brand Management

• Brand Equity
• Benefits of Brand Equity
• Unique Aspects of Branding
• Professional Sports
• College Sports
• Corporations’ Use of Teams and Athletes
• The Future

Sports organizations, such as professional teams, college athletic departments, health clubs and even athletes, increasingly view themselves as brands to be managed. In addition, corporations spend billions of dollars every year to sponsor sporting events in an attempt to further their brands. To understand brand management, we must start with a definition of brand. According to David Aaker, “a brand is a distinguishing name and/or symbol (such as a logo, trademark, or package design) intended to identify the goods or services of either one seller or a group of sellers, and to differentiate those goods or services from those of competitors” (Aaker 1991, 7). As the branding concept relates to sports, the most noticeable application is to team names and related nicknames. For example, the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball and Manchester United of the English Premiere soccer league are strong professional sports brands. Coca-Cola and Nike are companies that regularly associate their brand names with sports entities to sell more products.
Brand management starts with the brand name but entails much more. Successful brand management creates brand equity or “a set of assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or that firm’s customers” (Aaker 1991, 15). In the examples of the New York Yankees and Manchester United, both teams have long histories of success in competition. This success can be viewed as a strong asset linked to their respective brands. Nike paid Manchester United $473 million in a ten-year sponsorship agreement. A significant benefit of this agreement for Nike is that Nike products will be worn by the team when it plays. The agreement could also link the Manchester United brand name (and all of its assets such as success and tradition) to the Nike brand name.

Brand Equity

Brand equity is created through the development of brand awareness and a brand image. Brand awareness is the ability of a consumer to recall the brand name of a product when the industry in which that product competes is mentioned. If a consumer is unaware of the brand, then the brand cannot have equity in the consumer’s mind. Brand awareness is easy to achieve for some sports entities. For example, most U.S. fans would name the Dallas Cowboys, Miami Dolphins, or New England Patriots when asked to name professional U.S. football teams. For other sports entities, achieving brand awareness is not as easy. New events and programs, such as the Dew Action Sports Tour (the first tour for action-sports athletes), must create awareness to be successful. Similarly, some corporations use sponsorships to create brand awareness. Nextel’s sponsorship of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) points championship is an attempt to build greater awareness of Nextel in the technology industries in which it competes.
The brand image of an organization must be developed in order for the organization to have brand equity. Brand image is defined as “perceptions about a brand as reflected by the brand associations held in consumer memory” (Keller 1998, 93). Brand associations are the links in someone’s memory to the brand name. Put another way, brand associations represent anything that exists in someone’s memory with respect to a particular brand. For example, when asked about theWimbledon tennis tournament, a tennis fan might mention words or phrases such as tradition, grass playing surface, allwhite uniforms, and great tennis.These words or phrases are brand associations.Keller argues that in order to create brand equity, brand associations must be strong, unique, and favorable. One of the strong, unique, and favorable associations with the Wimbledon tennis tournament is the grass playing surface. One of the strong, unique, and favorable brand associations associated with Major League Baseball’s Boston Red Sox is the stadium the team plays in—Fenway Park.

Benefits of Brand Equity

Brand equity provides a number of benefits for a sports entity, including strong loyalty to the brand. For example, the Chicago Cubs team of Major League Baseball, despite not winning a world championship in nearly one hundred years, regularly draws capacity crowds to its stadium, Wrigley Field.Why? The Cubs draw fans because the team has strong brand equity.Thus, having a strong brand enables a sports organization to retain fans even though the organization does not perform well. Brand equity provides other benefits, such as the ability to create and/or expand licensing (creation of products with the team name, logos, and colors) opportunities. Manchester United sells millions of dollars in merchandise worldwide because the team has such a strong brand. A sports organization that has brand equity is also more likely to not lose fans when it raises prices because fan loyalty to the brand is so high.

Unique Aspects of Branding

Because the outcome of sports competition is difficult to control and because the outcome affects a fan’s enjoyment of the competition, branding of a sports product is more challenging. As a result, many teams focus on providing the best possible experience for their fans in order to create brand associations. Unlike most consumer goods and services, sports have the ability to engender strong emotional reactions in their consumers. In some cases this ability can be advantageous in creating brand associations. For example, when a team such as the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association has a history of success (that translates into a strong, unique, and favorable association tied to the past) but is not successful currently, the team can promote its future by reminding its fans of the joy they experienced when the team was successful. These reminders trigger associations of what they felt as they followed a championship team. Because sports are often consumed in a social setting, fans also can have the strong, unique, and favorable brand association of sharing good times with friends or family. For this reason many sports marketers facilitate social interaction through the development of website chat rooms and bars and restaurants at stadiums and arenas.

Professional Sports

Brand management in professional sports typically occurs at three levels: the league or governing body, the team, and the athlete. David Stern, commissioner of the National Basketball Association (NBA), is a master of branding at the league level. Stern assumed the helm of the NBA in 1984 and developed widespread popularity for the league by creating strong, unique, and favorable brand associations relating to star players such as Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson. He also created strong associations tied to the NBA as an entertaining product. Using advertising taglines and positioning statements such as “I Love this Game,” Stern oversaw the promotion of NBA action as exciting, fun, and entertaining.
At the team level teams create strong, unique, and favorable brand associations in a variety of ways. In addition to promoting star players, a team can make its head coach a source of brand equity. For example, Phil Jackson, former coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers of the NBA; and Bill Parcells, former coach of the New York Jets and Giants and New England Patriots and current coach of the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League, are sources of strong, unique, and favorable brand associations with a sports team. Logos and team names can also be sources of brand associations. For example, the National Football League’s team in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has a name— “Steelers”—that is representative of the city’s historically rooted major industry, the production of steel.The name provides an identity (hard working, blue collar) for the team that resonates with the community. Another source of brand awareness is the stadium in which a team plays. For example, given their historical significance, Old Trafford, where Manchester United plays its home soccer matches, and Santiago Bernabeu, where Spanish professional club Real Madrid plays, create strong, unique, and favorable brand associations.
The athlete can also be a brand. Did a more recognizable figure than Michael Jordan exist worldwide during his playing days? Similarly, athletes with global appeal, such as U.S. golfer Tiger Woods, British soccer player David Beckham, and race car driver Michael Schumacher of Germany, are brands unto themselves, as evidenced by the large sums of money that corporations pay them to endorse their products. Since about 1990 female professional athletes have increasingly become sports brands as well. In the United States soccer player Mia Hamm and tennis players (and sisters) Venus and Serena Williams have developed strong associations for themselves and the companies that endorse them.

College Sports

Brand management in major U.S. college athletic programs is similar to brand management in professional sports setting in some ways. For example, players, coaches, and stadiums can contribute to the creation of brand equity. However, some differences exist in the overall influence of each of these factors on the sports brand.Whereas star collegiate athletes are at college for only four to five years, star professional athletes may play their entire career of ten or more years with the same team. As a result, the head coach, who could be at one college for twenty or more years, may be a more influential source of strong, unique, and favorable brand associations than are athletes. For example, Joe Paterno has been head football coach at Pennsylvania State University since 1966 and has donated millions of dollars to the educational side of the university. Because of such donations and the success of his teams, he is a strong source of positive brand associations.
Other factors can create strong, unique, and favorable brand associations in the college setting. For example, the athletic reputation of a college is tied to the overall reputation of the college. For example, beyond its athletic prowess, the University of Michigan athletic program is tied to a university with a history of academic prestige. Additionally, the experience of watching (either in person or on television) a college sports event is different than watching a professional sports event. Most notably, marching bands play before, during, and after the event, adding to the experience and perhaps adding to the associations with a college’s athletic program.

Corporations’ Use of Teams and Athletes

The most common means by which corporations build their brands is sponsorship agreements with leagues, teams, events, and athletes. Corporations that sponsor events seek a variety of benefits, two of which are building brand awareness and enhancing or reinforcing brand image. Under Armor, a company that makes performance-based sports apparel products, created awareness for its products when famous athletes were seen wearing Under Armor apparel under uniforms and in practice settings. Presence on the playing field or in the arena is often a key strategy that makers of sportsrelated products use to create awareness. For example, Gatorade wants to be on the sidelines at athletic contests so that attendees and viewers see athletes drinking Gatorade. Similarly, Spalding pays the National Basketball Association for the right to produce the “official basketball of the NBA.” From such exposures sportsrelated products gain not only awareness, but also credibility because people can reason that if the product is used by athletes or coaches in competition, the product is one of the best.
Corporations also sponsor athletes, teams, and events to generate strong, unique, and favorable brand associations. For example, Nike became well known for sponsoring athletes who wore its products. Some people argued that Nike focused on identifying athletes who fit the image that Nike attempts to project: “Nikeendorsed athletes continued to embody the athletic ideals of determination, individuality, self-sacrifice, and winning through their continued successes on and off the playing field” (Keller 1998, E-9). Nike’s sponsorship of Michael Jordan starting in 1984 is a perfect example of how Nike enhanced the image of its basketball shoes. Building on the shoes’ “air” technology (air pockets in the soles), Nike partnered with Jordan, who was known for his ability to jump and remain airborne while shooting a basketball. One advertisement for Air Jordan shoes was described as a “testimonial comprised of nothing more than Jordan’s ability to fly like a bird and the implication that the padded [air] technologies bound to his feet had something to do with his agility and grace” (Katz 1995, 7).
Air Jordan shoes are an example of how a corporation enhances or reinforces brand associations through its involvement with athletes, teams, or leagues. Some researchers argue that a potential sponsor should consider the image of a sports entity.The image of an athlete, team, or event can help a sponsor reshape its image as well. For example, in an attempt to become the leading sponsor in soccer, a sport traditionally dominated by rival Adidas, Nike entered into two enormous sponsorship agreements with teams considered among the best in the world—the Brazilian national team and Manchester United. Mountain Dew is another example of a company that has borrowed brand associations from a sports organization. Mountain Dew has sponsored many action sports (snowboarding, BMX motorcycling, skateboarding, etc.) since such games began to become popular through cable TV network ESPN’s X-Games. Through its sponsorship of these alternative sports, Mountain Dew has repositioned its brand as edgy, rebellious, and irreverent.

The Future
Leagues, events, teams, and athletes increasingly attempt to develop brand associations that portray them as being charitable or concerned about the community. Such “cause-related” sports-marketing efforts strive to create yet another strong, unique, and favorable brand association. Judging by the popularity of these efforts, they will become more important to brand management in the future.

See also Franchise Relocation; Sponsorship