The University of Kansas National Championship: How KU marketing adapted to the win. 

 In 2022 the University of Kansas walked out of their yearly tournament of March Madness with the biggest win: The National Title. This win was quite a proud moment for the students of KU and the community of Lawrence Ks. That day is a day many of us will never forget and a day that brought more opportunity to the university. The March Madness tournament was a month that many people in the journalism world wanted to cover including KU marketing. 

KU marketing is the team that runs all social media and ads for the university. Any verified KU account is most likely run by the marketing team. The team follows a mantra that KU puts out known as the “secret order of KU” that covers the strategy that marketing likes to follow and the goals they have for each post that is made. The marketing team works off of strategy. Sprout Social says “that the time spent on social media is higher than ever” (Sprout Social). That is why the goal for KU marketing is to strategically lay out the social post in a user-friendly way.

Each post made by the marketing team is curated under a certain theme. For example: “Campus Beauty” or “Fit and Feel”. These themes help the team divide up each post into a category. The University of Kansas marketing team has one goal and that is to cover all and every part of student life there is. Though many may say that sports are a huge part of student life. Yes, I agree it is marketed big at KU but that is not KU marketing’s doing, but the sports department on their own. They cover sports but very little. KU marketing wants to be able to open opportunities for other student life organizations. KU marketing had a set plan every week. They knew what was going on before the week began, they knew who was being highlighted and why, and there is always a post-landing under one of the many categories they followed. This strict schedule came to a halt during the March Madness season. 

The 2022 season was something that a lot of us did not expect. KU Marketing had to take a pause and reflect on what was their main focus for March. Everything they had planned was going to change and they knew it. Marketing is fast-paced and you know you have a good team if you can keep up with the changes. They knew that the tournament was gaining viewership that year. The NCAA announced “that the final championship between Kansas and North Carolina was the third most watched game in tournament history”(Tournament Viewership). The further along Kansas went the more KU marketing had to shift their plan. The team realized early on they needed to kick it into high gear when it came to covering the tournament. KU marketing director Lauren Erickson shared the stats that the social media experienced during March and April. The team created 7 plus projects in 2 weeks, a 102% increase in new users on the ku.edu main page, 287% engagement on Instagram, 5000 new followers on tik tok and 993% views. These are just a couple of the results the marketing team gained after winning the national championship. Erickson reported “Beyond this it's really hard to talk about the effect the championship had on ku marketing in terms of causation (instead of correlation). We suspect that it increases web traffic and is at least in part due to their name being on the national stage.” (Erickson). Marketing is a hard thing to prove when it comes to viewership because there will never be direct evidence but just assumption. KU marketing put together that the national championship had a larger effect on their stats due to the university name being national news. 

The championship was able to bring all this opportunity to the university and the marketing team but it also brought a large opportunity to many of the Journalism students here at KU. 

Many students gained opportunities from this and took the season by storm. We are lucky enough to attend a university that lets their students work on the job site and that is what this national title gives to many students. Journalism majors were able to report on games, go to the tournament and take photos of players, video the games, and much more. It opened up new opportunities for many students to see if they wanted to go into the sports journalism field or the overall journalism route. It is a year after the win and many students still get to showcase their work from that month and gain so much skill. Grace Virgillito, a journalism major with a minor in design said “Walking into Chalmers and seeing photos taken by students showcased on the walls from that day was awesome to see” (Virgilitto). The University of Washington talks about students being able to engage with their majors and present to classmates is something that will motivate others. (Student Engagement ). 

The national championship will truly be a time many of us will never forget. It was a year that brought endless opportunities to students and KU as a whole. This win reminded us of all the impact that sports truly have and how just one team helped out so many others.