By Jim Buice
How do you go about building a brand?
For App State Athletics, it's all about leveraging opportunities, and certainly the first three weeks of the 2022 football season offered an unprecedented chance to do just that.
Spencer Bridges, App State's senior associate athletics director for revenue, is at the forefront of leveraging those opportunities.
"We had the best September in college football," Bridges said.
Of course, that included the "biggest home game in school history" against North Carolina in the opener before a record crowd of 40,000-plus in an incredible 63-61 shootout.
That was followed by the huge 17-14 upset at No. 6 Texas A&M, which led to App State landing ESPN's College GameDay the next Saturday morning in Boone before the dramatic Hail Mary victory over Troy.
The estimated advertising value of GameDay's first visit to App State was over $500 million with more than 2.8 million ESPN viewers in the show's final hour and one of the top 30 most-viewed episodes in the show's history.
"We've been working on how we gain and leverage national exposure since we made the transition to FBS," App State Director of Athletics Doug Gillin said. "Our win over A&M and hosting of College GameDay was a special opportunity to showcase our university, community and football program to a national audience over an entire week."
Gillin pointed to a brand strategy that's been developed over the course of his eight years at App State and includes game day experience enhancements, creative App State licensed products, entrepreneurial revenue generation, facility enhancements, strategic football scheduling, hiring and retaining high-caliber staff, corporate partnerships, consistent visual branding, social media engagement and media relations.
It was a September to remember with 464,000-plus visitors and 1.97 million page views for the most in a single month in the history of
appstatesports.com. Also in the month, App State Athletics' social media interactions were 16th among all Division I schools and first among Group of Five schools with 252,000-plus interactions. And App State Athletics coordinated 185 football-related media interviews in September alone.
The numbers have been building since an earlier run in football from 2005 to 2007 when the Mountaineers won three straight FCS championships and pulled off what many consider to be the greatest upset in college football history over Michigan in the 2007 opener, also in September.
"Obviously, all of that put App State on the map," Bridges said. "Beating Michigan and winning three straight FCS titles was certainly a catalyst that put App State on the nation's radar."
The transition to the Sun Belt Conference and FBS level that followed several years later led to "riding the next wave." That included being ranked in the Top 25 while beating both North Carolina and South Carolina in 2019 along with four straight Sun Belt championships and six consecutive bowl victories.
Bridges recalls when he came to Boone just before the start of the 2016 season when App State had its last biggest home game ever against the University of Miami.
"It was a magical day and a full house," he said. "It's when we really started to fine tune what it means to have a Game Day at the Rock, and what our capabilities are."
Besides football, the men's basketball team's NCAA March Madness appearance in 2021 attracted millions of dollars' worth of national media exposure and brand appeal. The athletics department continues to look for entrepreneurial ways to increase its brand reach with all sports.
From a licensing standpoint, App State has been on the front lines of creating branded products in the last few years such as custom beer, wine, seltzer, coffee, BBQ sauce, bourbon, beef jerky and more. App State Athletics launched its Mountain Born apparel collection in 2016 in a co-brand collaboration with alum and country music star Eric Church. Fellow alum and country music sensation Luke Combs joined the collection in 2018.
There was even an App State wrapped car that Kyle Busch drove to a NASCAR win in the 2020 Alsco 300 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Licensing royalties reflect the continuing growth in this area. App State's royalties grew 35% from 2020-21 to 2021-22. Royalties from the first two quarters of 2022-23 have already surpassed the entire 2020-21 total.
"If it has our brand on it, we want to make sure that people have the opportunity to get it," Bridges said.
App State Athletics brought in Luke Combs for his first stadium show to a quickly sold-out Kidd Brewer Stadium crowd in 2021. Darius Rucker will be the next big stadium show headliner at App State this year, in partnership with An Appalachian Summer Festival.
"In addition to football games, we've asked ourselves how we can bring more people to Boone to enjoy our brand, while involving the entire university and High Country community too," Bridges added. "It's an exposure thing for us. How do we expose the most people to App State?"
So far, so good.
