Last year, WME acquired IMG for about $2.4B with the promise of connecting IMG’s deep and far-ranging sports, fashion and media operations with the vast talent, access, reach and expertise of WME, the world’s leading entertainment agency.
WME/IMG represents talent such as Oprah Winfrey, Gisele Bundchen, Matt Damon, Serena Williams, Denzel Washington, and many, many more stars. Their clients have graced the last five SI Swimsuit covers, starred in 20 Super Bowl ads this year, have clients behind more than 100 NY Times BestSellers last year, helped write/produce half of all scripted broadcast series, created YouTube videos reaching more than a billion people…the amount of social and general media influence is long and very deep.
IMG’s college business in particular, which represents more 200 collegiate institutions nationwide, is now seeing the fruits of collaboration with its Hollywood brethren. This is evident as the college football season kicks off:
BRAD PAISLEY – COUNTRY NATION COLLEGE TOUR:
Brad Paisley, one of the world’s most popular and successful country music artists (23 #1 singles), is taking his tour to IMG partner universities in a series of free concerts.
The Country Nation College Tour presented by Zaxby’s will roll into Blacksburg on September 6, setting up on the Virginia Tech campus. Paisley, a WME client, will also barnstorm Texas, Baylor and Arkansas on September 10-12. Additional school dates for the tour’s larger second leg will be announced in the coming weeks.
The three-time GRAMMY winner’s affection for college football runs deep. Paisley’s newest single, “Country Nation,” weaves-in a shout-out to 18 college sports mascots. Paisley, a devoted Mountaineers fan, has guest picked on ESPN’s “College Gameday” in Morgantown. He’ll again be a spokesperson for College Colors Day on Sept. 4. Last season Paisley cut custom College Colors videos for more than a dozen IMG schools. FSU’s video was the school’s most popular social content going into the new season getting engagement seven times higher than their average preseason post, according to IMG College VP/Comms Andrew Giangola.
COLLEGE COLORS DAY – (SEPT 4) – WME|IMG COLLABORATION
College Colors Day is Friday, Sept. 4 as college football kicks off. For the past 11 years on College Colors Day, fans wear the apparel of their favorite school. The “holiday” is celebrated by 12,000+ retailers, hundreds of universities, and millions of fans donning their team colors as America’s second most-popular sport begins again.
New for 2015 is the College Colors Challenge, a socially-fueled national contest for an all-expenses paid trip to the College Football Playoff National Championship.
Fans participating in a series of photo and video challenges on social media can flaunt their colors, express school spirit, and vie for a trip to college football’s title game.
The challenges revolve around 3 categories represented by the hash-tags: #SQUADPIC (large group), #FAMPHOTO (family), and #SELFIE (individual). Some of the challenges include fans posting an epic trick shot video while wearing their colors, an awkward college colors family photo, and college colors displayed at the office.
IMG’s college licensing team in Atlanta has collaborated with WME resources to add new components to increase College Colors Day fan engagement:
Influencer Engagement: 70+ notable athletes from IMG schools as well as a few dozen WME clients will drive awareness with #CollegeColors posts on Twitters. Any number of fun engagements with celebs and their alma mater are expected over the weekend, with a few, including Elizabeth Hasselback and Michigan and former Dodgers great Steve Garvey and Michigan State already rolled out.
CONTENT CREATION:
YouTube and Whistle Sports megastars Dude Perfect created a Trick-Shot video and issued a challenge to six different schools for their students, fans and followers to submit videos of their best trick shot. A Dude Perfect video that just posted quickly generated nearly more than 50,000 views on Facebook, the Instagram post has over 20,000 likes.
DIGITAL COLLABORATION:
Another example of Collaboration with WME is in the digital space – WME’s digital experts collaborate with IMG’s College’s licensing team in Atlanta to bring new e-commerce social technology to school partners. For example:
College Sports pioneered “Twitter Buy Now” – a technology embedding a “buy button” into the Twitter feed. Twitter debuted “Buy Now” in the college space in selling merchandise for the Notre Dame – USC rivalry football game last season.
In the end, the passion of college support is about many things to many people, but having a campaign that touches so many points; celebrity, casual fans, music, social, technology, branded apparel, licensing, is a great example of convergence, and that convergence for WME/IMG really scores in college football.
