UniSC Basketball
During my time at the UniSC, I was a part of a group project that had us design a marketing campaign for the young UniSC basketball team. This project incorporated students from multiple disciplines to simulate a real world marketing team. In this team, I was responsible mainly for design and photography, but also took responsibility in some marketing research aspects of the campaign.
The Client
UniSC is the only university in QLD to field a team in the University Basketball League (UBL) and have been in the league since 2021. UniSC is at a point where they are looking to improve their infrastructure and presence of their basketball team, and we were tasked to create the foundations for their 2025 season.
The Brief
Through our work we aimed to deliver UniSC a promising future for growth and success. This work contains vital aspects in which we believe can allow for a thriving program. It compares other programs, estbalishes an evidence based marketing plan and provides images for future marketing collateral and marketing collateral ready to be utilised. This work also provides evidence on how we can Åenhance the site and the benefits that can be witnessed from doing so.
Deliverables
A comprehensive marketing strategy
Sponsorship prospectus
Marketing collateral
Site enhancement plan
Half time entertainment ideation
New uniform designs
Social media strategy
Brand and competitor analysis
Market Research
After familiarising ourselves with UniSC’s basketball organisation, we began to focus on the competitors, and how they operated themselves. A notable difference between UniSC and the rest of the teams, was the fact UniSC was lacking in their social media presence. Other teams were putting considerably more effort in their basketball social media compared to UniSC, and we pinned this as key issue in UniSC’s program, both in event promotion but also program engagement. UniSC opted to use a single sports and fitness page as a hub for all of their programs, which may be easier on resources, but makes it hard for the basketball team to standout from the rest of the sports promotion.
The Approach
The market research informed us of the best approaches to explore to optimise our results. We identified several problems that hindered what UniSC had the potential to achieve, and developed our strategy around the solutions. We determined the best approach for us was developing a long term strategy that would set the foundations for UniSC to build upon in future seasons. By laying out key activities that UniSC could undertake to strengthen themselves in their position of being the only QLD university to participate in the UBL.
The Problems
Lack of Social Media Presence
UniSC Basketball lacks the designated social media account that the competing teams have. Rather UniSC operates all of their sports and fitness social media through the same account. To the target audience, this causes several issues such as bloating information; posting irrelevant sports; missing information
Leverage Potential
Currently, UniSC is the only university in QLD to compete in the UBL. This is a massive opportunity for UniSC, that the organisation doesn’t capitalise off to its full potential. This is a USP that significantly enhances the university’s appeal to prospects across the state.
Program awareness is the overarching issue of the organisation. It covers students awareness; prospect awareness; and fan awareness.
Program Awareness
Our Solution
After researching our target audience, we decided the best platforms to use were TikTok and Instagram, with videos being developed for both platforms and specific content for instagram. A content calendar was developed to maximise consistency and capitalise off of the platforms algorithms and boost exposure. Community building in general was a major goal for the social media aspect of the plan, with a dedicated social media platform and other infrastructure developed for fan participation.
UniSC is in a unique position to develop prospect interest and grow its program and we wanted our plan to target this. We developed activities that specifically aimed at high school students in grade 11 and 12 to raise awareness of UniSC’s program within the up and coming prospects. A key event for this project was UniSC hosting basketball gala days/tournaments at their stadium, inviting highschools around the Sunshine Coast area to participate and allowing their students to experience the University campus.
Another idea that supported the program awareness goal was to invite class days from the surrounding schools to come and watch the UniSC home games where possible, in order to create a crowd atmosphere for the team, and also raise awareness of the program.
