brands with balls
Posted by Anthony Zumpano on October 14, 2009 05:49 PM
Georgia State University is rebranding -- not just the look of its athletics department, but also its sound. A new fight song will complement a redesigned logo and mascot as part of a revamped sports program, which includes its first football team and marching band.
With the exception of a few basketball powerhouses, a college’s football team is usually the most prominent part of an athletics program, and a fight song, such as the Notre Dame Victory March, is linked to the team and its fans as much as Big Macs are to the “two all-beef patties” jingle.
The challenge for Georgia State is developing a song that ties back to the tradition of a nearly 100-year-old institution while also developing “a culture of school spirit here, especially spirit that’s tied into football and athletics,” according to Chester Phillips, the school’s director of athletic bands.
The school chose as its composer Jay Bocook, whose musical pedigree includes three Olympiads and arrangements for the Hal Leonard Corporation, the world’s largest sheet-music publisher. Bocook notes that the fight song has to have staying power as part of the Georgia State brand, because composing “something that becomes the tradition of an institution is different than writing a halftime show.” He could easily be talking about the Intel sonic logo, which is not just a tag at the end of a computer commercial, but an aural brand asset as valuable as a logo.
The school plans to go the route of several brands by planning focus groups of students and alumni to critique the music and create the song’s lyrics, but there’s one thing that branding alone won’t be able to do: beat Shorter College in its inaugural game.
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