Friday, January 24, 2020

Personal Branding

To a casual Football fan, it seems like mostly the quarterbacks and the occasional receiver get all the media attention. We know their names and maybe their faces. They're invited to all the parties and the tabloids pay attention to their whereabouts and off-field antics. So, what comes of the 40- or 50-some other players on an NFL team? How can they build up a brand themselves to garner lucrative appearances and sponsorships?

In today's highly digital age, the creation of unique and interesting content can be the answer to growing valuable awareness, as discussed in class. But, that content can come in many more formats that it used to. I came across a funny - but genius - marketing deal today that plays into the idea of building up superior content for better awareness.

Earlier this week, Denver Bronco Linebacker Von Miller was on a popular sports podcast, Pardon My Take. During the conversation, the hosts and Miller discussed how he could perhaps play on the offensive line rather than defensive. Instead of leaving the question to listeners to debate amongst themselves, the hosts proceeded to ask Miller to pursue that, and then give each of them $1,000 for every future touchdown scored. In exchange, they offered general coverage and support on their podcast or social accounts. With 4 hosts, that's $4,000 per touchdown. But, one of the hosts alone has almost 1M followers on Twitter. If just that host mentions this player, on just Twiter, he'll see a rough cost per view of $0.004 . While this may not be a formal metric, it is still an incredible deal to help grow Miller's "brand" awareness!

As search engines continue to tweak their algorithms in ways that are harder to trick, content creation and endorsements like this become more powerful and valuable.



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