Alabama unveils branding platform The Advantage
College athletics are changing, and Alabama is making steps to adapt to the new landscape. Tuesday, the university unveiled its new branding platform, The Advantage, will provide Crimson Tide student-athletes with the education and tools necessary to build and elevate their personal brands.
Recently, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed a name and likeness bill that will allow college athletes to profit from endorsement deals. That law will become official beginning on July 1.
According to a university release, The Advantage will focus on brand management, maximizing personal social media platforms and financial literacy
“We are excited to launch this new program, which even further demonstrates our commitment to fully developing our student-athletes,” Alabama Director of Athletics Greg Byrne said in the release. “We are blessed to have incredible resources on campus with our institution, allowing us to better fit our specific needs and evolve The Advantage, as needed.”
Alabama has been an extremely profitable brand, generating the most royalties among the Collegiate Licensing Company’s partner institutions the past six seasons, according to the release. It has ranked in the top two in royalties generated in each of the past 11 years.
The release also stated that officially licensed Alabama products were sold in more than 9,000 unique retailers over the past five years and that during the last decade, over 60.3 million units of officially licensed Alabama merchandise has been sold by licensees. Most recently, the Crimson Tide set the 48-hour post-national championship win record for NCAA merchandise sales across all sports.
Prior to the 2020-21 academic year, Alabama partnered with Socialie, a content distribution platforms which has been instrumental in providing student-athletes, coaches and staff direct access to photos and videos. Alabama announced that during the month of April its student-athletes added nearly 140,000 followers on social accounts connected through Socialie for an overall total of 2,235,124 followers on connected personal accounts combined.
Alabama also announced that in 2020, Alabama athletics social channels generated more than 1.1 billion impressions, while the previous month totaled more than 50 million interactions on the sport Instagram and Facebook accounts alone.
