Avoiding Communication Crises with NIL Campaigns
By Nicole Schuman for PRNEWS
As summer winds down, college students return to school and so begins the rally cries and pep band revelry for collegiate athletics. And this year student-athletes have more on the line. As always, there are scholarships and professional league recruiting. In addition, it’s the first full academic year that student-athletes have a chance to grow deep pockets through NIL (name image likeness) deals.
While NIL may seem more of a topic for advertising, marketing or legal, it’s important PR takes its seat at the table. When a student-athlete enters a NIL deal, he or she becomes a representative of that brand.
And as any college attendee knows, while academic life is full of innovation and spirit, it also includes temptations and the occasional bad decision—ones that now can be amplified tenfold through social media.
It’s time for communicators to sharpen their pencils, dust off the notebooks and pay close attention to NILs and how they can impact brands, organizations, clients and campaigns.
Where to Begin: Vetting
Alex Sinatra, CEO and founder of Your Potential for Everything, a strategic sports consulting business, is a former student-athlete. A lawyer and marketer, Sinatra urges that companies vet student-athletes before signing deals with them. As they should with any influencer, PR professionals should be involved to protect the company from risks a student-athlete may bring.
“While it’s exciting to sign someone to become part of your brand, it’s also something to do with caution,” she says. Fortunately, the internet is a treasure trove of information about student-athletes, who often begin competing at a young age.
“Reach out to high school coaches, read clippings online…and because this generation documents everything…look through social media and do a Google search.”
In addition to discovering problem areas, such as discipline, vetting also reveals much about a NIL candidate’s character. This can include community service projects, if they were voted captain of their respective teams and the core values of those respective teams.
President at MikeWorldWide (MWW), Bret Werner, oversaw the launch of MWW’s NIL practice, now one year old. In addition to researching coaches and other team members, vetting includes reaching out to schools’ sports information directors (SIDs), he says.
“SIDs are going to understand not just which athletes are scoring on the field, but which can score with the media from an earned or social perspective,” Werner says.
He also suggests enlisting the help of a third-party platform for vetting as well as the negotiation and fulfillment stages of a partnership. Platforms like Opendorse list potential student-athlete partners in an organized fashion. It also includes student-athletes’ social media reach.
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