Month: October 2020

Meet the Prof: Bryan Denham, Campbell Professorship in Sports Communication

Dr. Bryan Denham holds the Charlie Campbell Professorship in Sports Communication at Clemson, where he is currently in his 22^nd year of teaching. Dr. Denham received the 2019-2020 award for Excellence in Research – Senior Scholar in the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences. He has published approximately 70 refereed journal articles and book chapters and also served for three years as Chair of the Department of Communication.

1. What part of your sports communication research are you most excited about?

Much of my scholarship has focused on the media, policy and health dimensions of substance use in sport and society. I published a study in Communication and Sport two years ago addressing the doping scandal at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, focusing specifically on how news of the scandal unfolded in the United States. The New York Times has long been considered a “legitimator” of news in the U.S., and sure enough, little coverage of the situation appeared prior to the point at which Grigory Rodchenkov, head of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, fled Russia. As shown in the documentary Icarus, he spoke to the New York Times in May 2016, shortly after arriving in the U.S. Although there had been some excellent documentaries produced in Europe, featuring whistleblowers Vitaly Stepanov and Yuliya Stepanova, U.S. news media did not get involved until the “newspaper of record” did so. The revelations proved embarrassing for Russia, and in fact a report from the U.S. National Intelligence Council stated that Russia had launched cyberattacks during the 2016 election year partially as a retaliatory action for high-profile doping allegations. I had the opportunity in 2019 to attend a conference in Colorado called Play the Game. It was the first time the group had met in the U.S., and it featured the Stepanovs, Bryan Fogel, who directed Icarus, representatives from the World Anti-Doping Agency and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and many other prominent people in sport. There was a lot of discussion of doping, match fixing and others issues in sport. The conference was a great experience.

I also study issues involving race and ethnicity in sport and recently published a study in the Sociology of Sport Journal addressing the capacity of sports participation to heighten awareness of racial issues in society. In 1954, a scholar named Gordon Allport argued that superficial approaches to reducing racial prejudice often failed due to an absence of contact among people. He suggested that sports participation stood to reduce prejudice, notably when members of differing races and ethnicities were members of a team pursuing a collective goal. There needed to be contact among people and something for which the members of a team could collectively strive. I analyzed data gathered from 12^th-grade students as part of the annual Monitoring the Future study, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, and found some support for the contact hypothesis. On the whole, White participants in sports in which members of racial minorities also competed seemed to have heightened awareness of issues involving race and ethnicity. Athletes in sports with less diversity – baseball, for example – did not show such patterns. To some extent, one can observe support for the contact hypothesis in many of the athletic programs at Clemson.

2. Discuss the development of sports communication at Clemson.

Clemson has been a leader in the development of sports communication curricula. When I came on board in 1999, I taught a sports communication class as a special topics course. That class became COMM325, Sports Communication, and the department gradually began to add courses such as Public Relations in Sports and Sports Media Criticism. We added a minor and then one of the few majors in the nation. Additional classes addressing topics such as sport in society, social media, and athlete-coach communication have also become part of the curriculum. When I started teaching at Clemson, studies about issues in sports communication had been published in scholarly journals, but few schools had developed coursework for undergraduates. We began teaching our courses, as did a limited number of other schools, and now such classes have become popular nationwide. We also offer a sports media course in the department MA program. The Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute has been able to fund two graduate students with sports communication interests each year.

3. What is your personal connection/passion to sports?

I grew up playing all kinds of sports – baseball, basketball, indoor soccer, outdoor soccer. We lived across the street from a school with soccer fields, baseball diamonds and a basketball court. We were also near St. Louis, which is one of best sports towns in the nation, especially in baseball. Checking box scores and reading sports pages was a daily ritual. The Major Indoor Soccer League had also emerged in those days, and the St. Louis Steamers drew large crowds at the old Arena. Those games were fun to attend. Fast paced with quite a few players from the St. Louis area. Sports were certainly a major presence, and there were lots of athletes to emulate.

But I also had orthopedic issues from the start, with quite a few shoulder dislocations and finally surgery on both. Like many people, I started lifting weights through rehabilitation and found a few lifts that I could do pretty well. I competed in a few meets – one at the famous Muscle Beach in California. I was able to parlay the weightlifting experiences into some training articles for popular magazines, getting involved with the industry side of sports communication. I still study magazines, although they have become thinner and thinner in recent years. Some have gone entirely online.

4. What lessons/advice do you give to students you teach/mentor?

In graduate school I took a sport psychology course as an elective and learned a great deal. Athletes who find success often immerse themselves in the training process by establishing a series of short-term attainable goals; this allows them to avoid anxiety associated with broad unwieldy goals that invariably involve factors beyond their control. Learning to focus on the pursuit of personal excellence instead of broad outcomes usually results in better sport performance. John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach at UCLA, was a proponent of these ideas, as was Pat Summitt, the highly successful coach of the Lady Vols at Tennessee. As Coach Wooden wrote, “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” Coach Summitt added that “Hard work breeds self-respect.”

For graduate students and budding academicians, lessons in sport psychology can prove valuable. As an example, one can worry a great deal about publishing scholarly journal articles – achieving outcomes – that are sometimes beyond the control of the scholar. One does not know who the referees for an article will be, nor does one know whether an editor will make a favorable decision. If one sets small attainable goals throughout the process of researching, writing and then submitting a research project, then he or she will be more apt to experience success. No one likes to experience rejection, of course, but it often presents an opportunity to improve a project based on constructive feedback.

For undergraduate students, many of whom aspire to work in creative fields, my advice is to seek out as many different experiences as possible – and read and write as much as possible. I was fortunate to attend a great journalism school at Indiana University in Bloomington. I then headed for Southern California and eventually enrolled in an MA program at Cal State Fullerton. That was a great experience. I had the chance to spend some time in the Little Saigon area of Westminster as part of a journalism practicum and interviewed a gentleman named Yen Ngoc Do, founder of the Nguoi Viet Daily News. He had been a correspondent during the Vietnam War and had seen a lot. But on the lighter side, I also enjoyed being a tourist in Hollywood and Beverly Hills and would sometimes venture down Sunset Boulevard to the research library at UCLA. After graduating from Cal State Fullerton, I traveled back across the country and completed my doctorate at the University of Tennessee. I am thankful for all of those opportunities and the diverse and enriching experiences they provided. Traveling to Europe was also an enlightening experience, and a highly recommend students take advantage of study-abroad programs. The Department of Communication at Clemson offers some excellent programs, although the Covid pandemic resulted in some cancellations.

5. How has Covid impacted sports/sports communication? 

I actually believe sports may have impacted Covid as much as Covid has impacted sports. The U.S. has not performed well in this pandemic, and our demand for nonstop entertainment and immediate gratification bears some responsibility. People in other nations have made the sacrifices necessary to get the pandemic under control, and for several weeks we were headed in that direction. Then came increases in the politicization of what is fundamentally a public health issue. Masks and personal protective equipment became politicized, and disinformation took hold.

In college and professional sports, the pandemic has shown that decisions based on science and careful reasoning may be overruled by shouting and demands that teams take the field. Yet, the recent World Series and NBA Championships saw some of their lowest television ratings ever. At the college level, one major conference returned just in time for the recent surge in Covid cases. The U.S. accounts for about 4 percent of the world’s population but 20 percent of Covid cases as well as 20 percent of Covid deaths. We should be doing much better. It will be interesting to see how – or if – 2021 shapes up.

To learn more about Dr. Denham’s  research projects, check out these Clemson University Newsstand pieces.

Patent Medicines

Anabolic Steroid Hazards

Sochi Winter Olympics Scandal

Dietary Supplement Issues

This is the first in a series of posts to introduce our legacy professors. We interviewed Angeline Close Scheinbaum for our first installment. She is our newest legacy professor, joining Clemson University in August 2019. Scheinbaum holds the Dan Duncan Professorship in Sports Marketing and is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Clemson University. She was a former Associate Director of Research for the Center for Sports Communication & Media at the University of Texas at Austin.

What area of sport marketing research are you most excited about lately?

The most exciting aspect of the sport industry to me lately is corporate social responsibility and advocacy through sport. It is a hot topic for sport marketers, fans, industry partners, venues, and for social justice at large. I think this is a really important topic for scholarship and industry studies alike. It is also of importance to collegiate athletics and professional sports. We are continuing to see sport used as a communication platform for advocacy on the importance of unity, anti-racism, love, education reform, and other important topics for our society. At a local level, here at Clemson, I am proud of our student athletes and support their Unity campaign.

I also publish on the intersection of corporate social responsibility and sport. My favorite paper I have done in sports marketing is broadly in the area of corporate social responsibility and sport. It is called “Social responsibility and event-sponsor portfolio fit” in European Journal of Marketing (2019) by myself, Russell Lacey (Xavier) and Meme Drumright (Texas). The study context was professional cycling at The Tour of Utah.

The reason I love this paper is because unlike the majority of my work that solves sport marketers’ or brand managers problems, this one takes a societal lens. Sport marketers must play a role in addressing concerns of marketing and society. A way sports marketers can contribute is by holding or sponsoring sporting events with a socially responsible dimension. We came up with the term “event social responsibility” (ESR), which is defined as “consumers’ perceptions that an event gives back to the community in which it takes place in a manner that is socially responsible”.

There are many ways to do this. One example is to have or sponsor professional sporting events with educational health and wellness initiatives, such as encouraging bike safety and wearing helmets when biking. Another example is to do sun cancer screenings at sporting events and educate attendees about skin health while playing or attending sports events. A more common example of event social responsibility is to have an event beneficiary that is prosocial in nature. For instance, one event I measured gave a donation to the Georgia Cancer Coalition and also promoted that nonprofit at the event. Our research finds that event sponsorship provides an important opportunity for brands to demonstrate their corporate citizenship. Hosting or sponsoring events can make advancements to solving social problems while creating marketing benefits for both events and sponsors. Event social responsibility integrates two key integrated brand communication aspects—experiential marketing communication and corporate social responsibility. A takeaway for sport marketing managers that they can “do well by doing good” with integration of a socially responsible dimension to a sponsored sporting event. We provided and empirically tested a model involving event social responsibility and how it brings outcomes important to marketers, such as word of mouth.

 How is sports a part of your life and how does this motivate your sport marketing research?

To have intrinsic motivation in a career, having a passion for the context as well as authenticity with it is paramount. I have always had passion for sports and marketing/advertising, so combining them seemed natural. Sports remain a defining part of my personal and professional life. I grew up playing softball and tennis and to this day am an athlete competing on United States Tennis Association teams. In addition to running consumer behavior studies in the context of sports and mentoring graduate students in sports marketing, I support student athletes and my children in sports. Sports is a passion for my family; my husband Benjamin was drafted by the Yankees and pitched in their minor leagues and is a graduate manager for Clemson baseball. Our sons play soccer, basketball and little league. I have consulted and run studies with USA Cycling, PGA events, and pro tennis events. So, I spend a lot of time at sporting events in many roles—a businesswoman measuring the sporting events for managers, an athlete, a professor of student athletes, and mother/wife of athletes. This inspires my research in consumer behavior, branding, and sports marketing because I observe many facets of the experience from different lenses. Having this level of personal as well as professional involvement brings authenticity.

 How do you incorporate industry in your sport marketing research?

Most of my research in sport sponsorship is grounded in working with industry. My first real world experience in helping measure sport events and sponsorships was in 2005-2006 with professional cycling—at the Tour of Georgia. The first brands I examined in a sports marketing context were Dodge, followed by Ford and AT&T. Those brands were early sponsors of the Tour de Georgia cycling race. Many sport sponsors are in the automobile branding sector, so over the years work with Toyota (auto racing), Mazda (auto-racing), and Suzuki (motorbike) ensued. Other brands include Shell (PGA), Lexus (tennis), and Volkswagen (cycling). Another event I have enjoyed working with multiple years is the Tour of Utah and the USA Cycling National Championships. Thus, my sports marketing industry experience does largely overlap with automotive branding. Further, the sports contexts vary. Some photos show the past partnerships with Road Atlanta and in Professional Cycling.

Based on your work experience, how have sport sponsorships changed over the last decade?

 Much of the basics remain the same, while the technology and brand integration have rapidly advanced. The first sports sponsorship partnerships I was a part of was with Dodge, in about 2005 while still a doctoral student and then again with Ford in 2006. They were the title sponsors of a professional cycling event, The Tour de Georgia, which was a premier warm up to the Tour de France at the time. The key differences to the current times was the lack of integrated brand promotion with social media. Social media and the digital integration of sport sponsorships was not a concern—it was before the social media revolution. It was more about integration with advertising campaigns, which is still huge. But today, sports marketers are keenly interested in the leveraging of the sports events and sponsorships with digital communication including social media. The current and future challenge remains with the blending of digital, and how to manage or handle sponsorships for any sport events that have no live fans or limited in-person fans due to the pandemic. Today, adaptability and flexibility is especially crucial in sport marketing. For example, bravo to whoever thought of putting pictures of fans in the stands and marketing that opportunity in these uncertain times in professional sport.

What is the next step for your sport marketing research?

Broadly, I am continuing the research portfolio of consumer behavior research in the contexts of sport sponsorship and integrated brand promotion including social media integration. I have goals to further publish models of sport sponsorship success based on existing data and new data collections. While most of my work is in field studies, I am now moving work to include lab settings to get another look at these topics in a more controlled environment and to make deeper theoretical contributions to the marketing literature.

 What are the key components of your mentoring and teaching at Clemson?

I think the key to graduate student mentoring and teaching for me lately is in “teaching marketing to transform”. This entails that marketing, future marketing professionals (current students), and future professors (current graduate students) have a role in expanding successful marketing to not just be business/profits minded but in making social advances as well. Marketing/advertising has a huge impact on society and vice-versa and can help with prosocial initiatives and making for a more inclusive marketplace. Currently, I am working with a graduate student at Clemson who is from applied statistics, and she is interested in merging that with sport research. I also co-mentored a dissertation this year that examines CSR and sport sponsorship.

In addition, I teach service marketing to undergraduate students at Clemson which includes the sport and experiential context. A final rewarding way to help with education of sports marketing is in writing a textbook “Advertising & Integrated Brand Promotion” (2019) that is coauthored with Tom O’Quinn, Rich Semenik and Chris Allen. We have a helpful chapter or two that takes an experiential marketing/sponsorship/sport marketing focus that helps get undergraduate advertising and marketing students excited about careers or future study in these topics. It is important to integrate teaching/mentoring with research and real-world experiences. At Clemson, I am looking forward to teaching undergraduate sports marketing in the Spring of 2021. Teaching and mentoring is the most important thing we do here at Clemson.

What advice do you have for students aiming for careers or higher education in sport marketing ?

1. Get inspired. Have some expertise or familiarity with sports- play them, attend sport events, be around sports as much as possible in order to inspire your studies and career in sport marketing.
2. Stay current. Read and subscribe to Sports Business Digest and Sport Marketing Quarterly in addition to following traditional sport media and social media outlets devoted to sport.
3. Get involved. Volunteer. Intern. Attend conferences. Join sport related organizations in your field. In marketing, you can join the Sport Marketing Association and the American Marketing Associations sport and sponsorship-linked marketing special interest group (@AMASportSIG). In communications, you can join the sports communication interest group of International Communication Association and follow them on Twitter at @ICASportComm. There is also an International Association for Communication and Sport. Another option is the Communication and Sport Division of the NCA. For sport management, there is a North American Society for Sport Management.
4. Seek mentors. Reach out to professors who are doing work in this area and centers, such as the  Robert H. Brooks Sports Science Institute professors here at Clemson.
5. Continue your education. Consider graduate school in a variety of areas that transcend sport; a beauty of sports research is that sport permeates many scholarly areas including but not limited to communications, marketing, sociology, management, sport medicine, kinesiology, and health. Even if this is not an option for now, consider the industry and coming back to graduate school or bringing your experience back to the classroom after an industry career.
6. Consider the media market. There are certain major media markets with larger populations that correlate with the most opportunities to work in professional sport. Certain media markets such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, Boston are examples of cities that have more opportunity due to the presence of multiple professional teams there.
7. Consider related careers. I think this tip is the most timely, given the status of the market and hiring freezes in some areas. There are related careers that may not have “sport marketing” in the title, but instead are in advertising, branding, promotion, social media, marketing analytics, sales, database management, and even relationship marketing. Each of those facets of marketing can overlap with sport depending on the client and their media and creative needs.
8. Remain flexible. Your first job may not be your “forever job”; stay flexible, gain broader marketing or agency experience and develop relationships. It may take a few jobs to find your zone in sport marketing.