A new collaboration between the University of Missouri athletic department and Mizzou's renowned School of Journalism pairs students studying strategic communication with student-athletes who volunteer for the partnership to explore and expand their brand potential in the name, image and likeness marketplace.
Under the watch of Brandon Lee, Mizzou's assistant athletics director for NIL, athletics has also partnered with the School of Law and MU's Office for Financial Success to offer resources for student-athletes related to their NIL experience, creating a mutually beneficial campus synergy that reflects Mizzou's innovative embrace of NIL, according to an article posted at mutigers.com.
Eighteen Mizzou student-athletes and 37 J-School students took part in the pilot program during its inaugural semester this past fall.
"I think this is such a marvelous experience involving the J School with the athletes," said Euphenie Andre, a senior triple jump and long jump specialist also studying journalism at Mizzou. "We have one of the best journalism schools in the country, and this just makes sense to do. I'm so glad I was able to be an experiment guinea pig for it. Because it was really truly amazing."
According to Dave Matter's report at mutigers.com, once paired together, the J-School student(s) conducted an interview with the student-athlete to learn more about their interests, their passions and their personalities. From there, they audited the student-athletes' social media platforms. How much content are they producing? What kind of content appears on their platforms? How frequently are they posting? How many followers do they have?
Next, they presented the student-athletes with a social media plan in the form of a playbook, packed with guidance on the content they should post and the best times to post their content — all to build their audience and further engage followers. Then they developed a business pitch with a list of potential companies they should contact for NIL partnerships, Matter reported.
After Andre and journalism honors student Abigail Klapatauskas first met, they focused on repositioning Andre's Instagram account "so that it speaks more directly to her audience of women that she really wants to empower," Klapatauskas said.
Based off that initial interview, Klapatauskas designed a mood board to reflect Andre's persona and her ambitions with this project, according to Matter.
"Within 10 minutes of taking notes during our interview, I'm pretty sure I wrote down the word 'confidence' like 17 times — and I had it underlined," Klapatauskas said. "Her bold, unapologetic self was just so striking to me."
"Going into this, I wanted to know how I could step up my engagement because (track and field) is an Olympic sport," Andre said. "We don't get as much coverage as the big power sports, like basketball and football. So I wanted to try to connect with Tiger fans as much as possible but also expand my brand as a track athlete here. I expressed that with Abigail, and she did such a phenomenal job of putting my visuals into real life. … Off one discussion that we had, she took everything that I'm interested in and made a beautiful mood board."
"As for Andre's social media, Klapatauskas wanted her to focus on producing more targeted Instagram reels, based on her analysis of Andre's followers and research of Instagram's algorithms," Matter wrote. "Andre followed through with new reels while competing at last month's Pan-American Games in Chile — and her Instagram analytics soon reflected her strategic choices. From the start of the project to late November, Andre's Instagram followers increased by 90, her number of accounts engaged increased by 200 percent and the number of accounts she reached increased by 69 percent. Also, the gender breakdown of women reached by her content increased from 30 percent to 40 percent. As a result of the enhanced engagement, Andre landed an NIL contract with a hair care product."
"She's a super valuable asset for all of these brands," Klapatauskas said, "and even though she's not as visible as some of the other athletes, the lack of visibility can give her more leverage because there's more potential there."
