Like it or not fall is back, and what better way to signify this than by the start of college football season? The first week of games featuring the University of Maryland versus the University of Miami showcased on a national level. But the biggest talk about the event wasn’t the game itself (Maryland beat Miami 32-24 in an upset), but rather what Maryland was wearing while they did it. Only a small percentage of this feedback seemed at all positive, with most people expressing great distaste.
Getting the Buzz Out
The short backstory with the Maryland uniforms is that Under Armour (based out of Baltimore) is supplying the university with edgy uniforms for each week of the season. It can be seen as a direct shot back at Nike, which has done the same thing for the University of Oregon (where Nike is headquartered) for a few years.
I by no means am a hardcore college football follower. But any casual sports fan, and even those outside the sports world, were talking about the clothing spectacle that was opening night. The announcers stopped talking about the actual game and commented on the looks. “Maryland jerseys” was a top trending topic on Twitter for a few days after game night. NBA superstar Lebron James tweeted about the subject, offering his opinion in no uncertain terms.
Google Trends even shows a huge spike in hits for simply searching “University of Maryland” in early September (the game was held September 5).
Stealing the Show
What Under Armour was able to do successfully was take the focus nearly entirely away from the football game at hand and have every person pay attention to the creations they made flying around the field. The only issue about all this publicity is that it was primarily negative. Phrases like “ewww,” “horrible,” “vomit inducing,” and “burn them” were passed around throughout the game and for days following.
This ESPN article shows claims of huge traffic increases across many outlets for the related brands: “Coach Randy Edsall saw his Twitter following jump from 2,500 on Sunday night to more than 4,450 by midweek, a nearly 80 percent jump…” “…The University of Maryland’s athletic site saw its traffic in the past week spike by more than 50 percent from that same week a year ago…” “…An Under Armour Facebook post on the uniforms generated almost 1,300 likes and nearly 400 comments, far surpassing the average engagement on the page. Reaction to other recent posts on the page varied from a few dozen likes to a few hundred, averaging around 150.”
The Spotlight is Yours to Take
Under Armour struck marketer’s gold with their uniform craze. They are a big company to begin with, but found themselves getting new heights of buzz from this game. The questions for others are: “Are you able to embrace mass negative feedback in order to get the word out about your brand?” “Is this the way you want your company to be portrayed in such a huge media spotlight?” “Do you want to be remembered as the company who made something viewed as so ‘bad’ it was great?”
