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| Oakland University's new director of athletics, Jeff Konya, brings successful marketing experiences to Golden Grizzlies. |
The “wait-and-see” approach is not Jeff Konya’s style.
Within days of stepping on campus in August 2014 as the new director of athletics, Konya launched a strategic marketing campaign designed to take Oakland University Athletics to new heights through increased visibility and taking advantage of its strong school spirit and mascot name.
“There is no other athletic moniker like ‘Golden Grizzlies,’ whether you’re talking professional or intercollegiate," he says. "We’re unique, and that is a strength. And we want to take ownership of that.”
According to Konya, the effort will consist of a multicomponent package that includes traditional advertising such as signage and print marketing as well as social networking.
“It will be a coordinated effort with the fans, our students and other constituents of Oakland University, all speaking the same language,” he explains. “We want to be consistent, using Oakland University, using Golden Grizzlies, and using the tagline, ‘See the Bear. Be the Bear. Wear the Bear.’”
Konya, who succeeded interim Athletic Director Robby Stewart, grew up in Royal Oak, Mich., and is well aware of the challenges Oakland faces in name and location recognition. He is taking steps to address that by maximizing opportunities that can enhance the visibility of the University.
The department negotiated a television package with TV20 to show 10 home basketball games — eight men’s and two women’s — this year. Furthermore, all men’s and women’s home basketball games will be aired on the ESPN3 platform and Comcast Channel 900. Some home games are scheduled for Sundays at 7 p.m., positioning the Golden Grizzlies in prime time up against few — if any — other college basketball games on the air and allowing students to return to campus and come to the game.
Already, the Athletics website name has been changed from ougrizzlies.com to goldengrizzlies.com. The program also has all social media outlets covered, and can be found on
Facebook, Twitter (
@GoldenGrizzlies) and Instagram (@
Golden_Grizzlies). Students can display how they “Wear the Bear” by sending selfies to Twitter or Instagram, which posts them directly to the site’s home page.
Konya says the visibility extends to a
new basketball court contest. “There is a silhouette of the state of Michigan on each of the court options so that when we have home games on national, regional or local television, everybody is aware that Oakland sits in the proud state of Michigan.”
The Golden Grizzlies’ marketing campaign is nothing new for Konya, who spent the last four years as athletic director at California State University, Bakersfield. CSUB athletics fundraising ranked first nationally among NCAA I-AAA institutions in 2012, and this past fiscal year, CSUB Athletics set all-time institutional record highs in scholarship fund dollars raised (more than $600,000) and overall fundraising (more than $2 million).
“The overall objective," he says, "is for Oakland University to become Top 10 in our NCAA classification, which is FBS without football, or NCAA I-AAA. I believe one of our central functions as athletic administrators is to make sure our coaches, student-athletes and staff have the infrastructure and tools to go out and perform, not only in competition, but in the classroom. By combining all of these elements, we’ll have the foundation in place.
“The key is to be able to sustain it,” Konya quickly adds. “There are a lot of institutions in our classification that have had a meteoric rise, then the quick fall. And that’s not what we want. We want a strategic plan in place, with mile markers.”
For a program that has taken giant leaps over the past 20 years, it’s the next step in the growth and advancement of Oakland University Athletics.
— By Fritz Reznor
