At the recent NWCA Convention in Fort Lauderdale, there was a lot of buzz coming into the event about the new Best of Brand awards. With nearly 100 teams participating in the competition, seven teams emerged as winners in the award program that was designed to honor NCAA wrestling programs for their investment in marketing. “The goal was to provide coaches with an incentive to market their programs throughout the year. By honoring them in this manner, we hope that coaches will continue to see the importance of strengthening their brand in the surrounding community” said NWCA Executive Director Mike Moyer.
By ELSM Staff Writers
At the recent NWCA Convention in Fort Lauderdale, there was a lot of buzz coming into
the event about the new Best of Brand awards. With nearly 100 teams participating in
the competition, seven teams emerged as winners in the award program that was designed
to honor NCAA wrestling programs for their investment in marketing. “The goal was
to provide coaches with an incentive to market their programs throughout the year. By
honoring them in this manner, we hope that coaches will continue to see the importance
of strengthening their brand in the surrounding community” said NWCA Executive
Director Mike Moyer. In the inaugural Annual Achievement category, there were three
specific awards that were handed out to the programs that best represented themselves
in the area of social media marketing throughout the year. In addition, there was also
a Daily Doses of Excellence category that included four specific awards for programs
that made unique investments that enhanced their marketing efforts in key areas.
“The awards were designed to honor the programs that are making the right
decisions to brand their programs,” said Elite Level Sport Marketing (ELSM) CEO
Coyte Cooper. “When programs are running their programs the right way, we want
them to be recognized because it grows the sport of wrestling.”
ANNUAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
“The Gold
Standard” Award: The highest honor in this year’s Best of
Brand awards was “The Gold Standard,” which was handed out to the program
that most effectively built their brand utilizing technology throughout the year. While
there were three competitive nominees in the field, this year’s 2011-12 honor was
handed out to the University of Maryland for their well-rounded, strategic approach on
a key social media sites to engage fans. “I am so honored to be recognized with
the award”, said head coach Kerry McCoy. “Our main goal is to be ‘out
there’ and we take pride in knowing we are doing a good job promoting our
program. We appreciate the efforts of the NWCA to help provide tools for programs to
increase the visibility of their teams and raise the level of awareness for the sport
of wrestling as a whole.
Finalists
- Award Winner: Maryland
- 1st Runner-Up: Minnesota
- 2nd Runner-Up: UTC
“Top Newcomer” Award: In addition to
identifying the annual top overall marketing effort, the Best of Brands also sought to
honor the programs that burst onto the scene with their social media marketing efforts
during the 2011-12 season. While it turned out to be a highly competitive field, there
were three nominees that differentiated themselves and emerged as finalists in this
category. Eventually, the University of Wyoming pulled away as the winner of the award
because of their unique content that they created for fans throughout the season.
Finalists:
- Award Winner: Wyoming
- 1st Runner-Up: Purdue
- 2nd Runner-Up: Virginia Tech
DAILY DOSES OF EXCELLENCE
AWARDS
“The Masterful Mission”
Award: In an effort to honor teams branding in a in a productive manner,
the first award in the Daily Doses of Excellence category was designed to reward teams
that were demonstrating a consistent message supporting the university mission. In this
category, three teams differentiated themselves due to their regular investments to
build the brand of the program, athletic department, and university. In the end, the
University of Tennessee Chattanooga program emerged because of their creativity and
consistency in social media content throughout the year. “It’s a privilege
to earn this year’s Masterful Mission award presented by the NWCA and ELSM. We
have a desire to positively brand our program and the award confirmed that Chattanooga
Strong is heading in the right direction”, said Assistant Coach Rocco Mansueto.
“It would be a disservice to our program and university if we didn’t
continue to build the [Chattanooga Strong] brand. With that said, we have deep rooted
goals of earning future Best of Brand awards.”
Finalists:
- Award Winner: UTC
- 1st Runner-Up: Missouri
- 2nd Runner-Up: Maryland
“Gotta Be Grassroots” Award: In the era of
social media, programs are now being evaluated on their ability to build a strong
database of fans. In addition, there is an expectation to consistently engage fans
through creative content and strategic delivery. The “Gotta Be Grassroots”
award was designed to reward programs who excelled in these two areas throughout the
year. Due to the impressive number of followers on Facebook and Twitter, three teams
emerged as finalists in the award category, and Cornell was identified as the
winner.
Finalists:
- Award Winner: Cornell
- 1st Runner-Up: Michigan
- 2nd Runner-Up: Oklahoma State
“The Highlight Reel” Video Award: With the
growing importance of videos in social media presence, the Best of Brand awards
included three categories to honor programs who excelled in the development of
innovative videos during the season. The “Highlight Reel” category was
designed to reward the programs that turned out the best online highlight videos during
the 2011-12 season. With a field of over 30 videos from different programs, there was a
wide range of submissions that were of outstanding quality. However, the committee
identified three finalists from the field before eventually crowning Minnesota as the
award winner in “The Highlight Video” category.
Finalists:
- Award Winner: Minnesota
- 1st Runner-Up: Maryland
- 2nd Runner-Up: Penn State
“Pure Entertainment” Video Award: In a field
that is constantly evolving, there is a growing need for programs to find a way to
develop videos that keeps fans engaged on social media. Building on the normal
highlight video content, it is becoming more and more important for entertainment to be
a premium for programs looking to succeed in marketing. The “Pure
Entertainment” award was created to highlight teams that realized success in this
area. In a highly competitive field of over 25 teams, four teams were chosen as
finalists due to their development of high quality entertainment videos. In an
extremely close race, Grand View was deemed the winner of the award. “It’s
pretty cool to be included in the NWCA’s Best of Brand awards, especially because
we were one of the only smaller non-D1 programs to win an award”, said head coach
Nick Mitchell. “It goes to show this kind of marketing is important at all
levels.”
Finalists:
- Award Winner: Grand View
- 1st Runner-Up: Minnesota
- 2nd Runner-Up: Southern Oregon and Drexel (tie)
“Solid Service” Video Award: In marketing,
it is important that programs are building their brand in a manner that creates value
for a wide range of stakeholders. In response to this need, the “Solid
Service” award was designed to honor the programs who created videos that
highlighted their involvement in community service activities. While there were several
high quality submissions, there were three teams that quickly emerged as finalists,
with SUNY Oneonta emerging as the eventual winner. “Winning this year’s
Best of the Brands award for Solid Service is a great honor. We would like to thank the
NWCA for recognizing Oneonta State Wrestling and our extensive volunteer efforts during
the Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee floods. Special thanks to Linda Drake from
the colleges CSRC for helping coordinate our teams volunteer efforts, and Jared Stanley
who shot the video and worked right along with us in Schoharie, NY”, said Head
coach Duane Ritter explained. “As the team’s coach, it’s my hope the
real reward was the lifelong lesson my wrestlers took away from the flood relief
experience by giving to those who had truly lost everything.”
Finalists:
- Award Winner: Oneonta
- 1st Runner-Up: Buffalo
- 2nd Runner-Up: American
This year’s 2012-13 NWCA and ELSM Best of Brand awards will be announced in
September. Programs interested in the competition should be on the lookout for the
release and guidelines. Contact information for these awards are provided below.
CONTACT INFORMATION: For
questions on the Best of Brand awards, please contact Coyte Cooper (coytecooper@elsmarketing.org) Facebook:
Elite Level Sport Marketing
(Wrestling Edition); Twitter: @ELSMarketing & @coytecooper