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NIL & Brand Strategy With The Brandr Group

Guest Rachel Maruno, The Brandr Group; Ashley Kern, The Brandr Group
28:27 min watch

Summary

Ashley Kern, Athlete Relations & Activations Director at The Brandr Group, and Rachel Maruno, TBG’s Vice President for School & Athlete Operations, sit down with ADU’s Tai M. Brown at the 2024 NIL Summit to discuss TBG’s position within the NIL landscape as a full-service NIL agency. Kern and Maruno share TBG’s origin story within professional sports and how the organization has shifted to address the specific needs of college athletic departments and student-athletes in an effort to provide equitable access to licensed marks. Kern: “We’re here to provide stability to a world that has been very volatile. We’re here to work very closely with the universities to make sure their student-athletes are being treated fairly and that we’re helping brands visualize new and creative ways to utilize student-athletes in their programming.

The conversation is indexed below for efficient viewing (click the time stamp to jump to a specific question/topic).

  • - Brandr - I’m going to assume that it has to do with branding and licensing but that’s all I know. Educate me on what Brandr does in this landscape.
  • - When you say co-brands, you mean companies that aren’t the institutions - connecting them with the athletes.
  • - Is CLC involved in what you do?
  • - If a school has a policy that doesn’t allow students to use their marks, you probably don’t want to work with that school.
  • - It would probably be a competitive disadvantage if a school doesn’t allow the students to use their marks.
  • - Is that an outcome of saying “We’re going to cut student-athletes in because they’re student-athletes” or is it if the student-athlete has an NIL deal, then you can have some of the royalty that’s tied to it?
  • - Relative to schools reducing part of the royalties… is that only on the products that have a student-athlete’s NIL tied to it? It’s not on the random cup sold at the bookstore?
  • - Is there a sales aspect to TBG? Are you going out and finding schools or do schools reach out needing someone to manage this aspect of NIL?
  • - So there’s a creativity aspect to it, beyond just facilitating licensing deals.
  • - How long have you two been with the organization?
  • - How long has the organization been around?
  • - You worked with Brandr before; what did you do?
  • - What was the learning curve- for you two specifically as individuals and then for Brandr- when NIL passed?
  • - You want to create a template but a template doesn’t always fit everybody - so how is your team dealing with that?
  • - It’s probably tough to be hands on with so many student-athletes.
  • - How often does that happen?
  • - Was the work you did in golf education something you had a passion for?
  • - So if the work you did before was just something you were good at, what was or is your passion?
  • - You mentioned that TBG is still trying to adjust to college athletics and a landscape that’s constantly changing. How do you strategize for the future while also being very successful right now?
  • - What is the Honey Stinger activation?

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