Princeton Sports Symposium

This week’s post is a wrap up of the Princeton Sports Symposium and was written by guest blogger Georgie Crandell a senior sport management student at York College of Pennsylvania.

The 2009 Princeton Sports Symposium took place last Friday.  The planning committee of the symposium did an excellent job of putting together some first-rate panel groups, which led to some dynamic discussions. 

The opening roundtable of the day included speaker Roland Hemond, one of the most respected and experienced executives in baseball, and also speaker Tom Verducci, a senior writer at Sports Illustrated.  Roland Hemond spoke in a refreshing, storyteller sort of way; he even provided his personal cell phone number to everyone in the audience and told us to call any time.  Seriously.

The panel topics were well-suited for the current trends, the most popular being Building Your Brand With Social Media, and Digital Media and Technology I & 2.  Digital and social media and technology are on the rise as we speak, and companies are finally starting to understand what they need to do to stay connected with fans and customers. 

Personally, I found the panel discussion on Building Your Brand With Social Media most interesting.  Panel members included Christopher Lencheski, Managing Member and Team Owner, Quad City Mallards, Lewis Howes, Founder, SportsNetworker.com, Peter Robert Casey, the first person to have received media credentials for using Twitter during a sporting event, and Amy Martin from Digital Royalty.  Digital Royalty develops social media strategies for corporate and entertainment brands, professional athletes, sports teams and leagues.  A couple clients include Shaquille O’Neal and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).  The panel discussion hit on many topics including how to “humanize” a brand, how to get sponsors on board to help out with branding strategies, and also potential ways to track whether or not Tweets help to gain a customer as opposed to just a follower. 

In addition to providing stimulating discussions, the Princeton Sports Symposium also provided everyone in attendance with the opportunity to network with one another.  Again, the planning committee did an excellent job and the experience was definitely worth the time.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 7:41 am and is filed under Marketing, Networking/Social Networking, Professional Development, Public Relations, Sponsorship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.