Jordan Kligerman is Assistant Athletics Director / Creative Services at Syracuse University, He recently answered 3 Questions with INFLCR:
1 In what ways did your creative team try to capitalize on the football team’s return to the Top 25 this past season?
Our creative team at Syracuse (Dave Gunn, Mike Lang, Tyler Cady) were positioned and anticipatory of success in football. We were formed with an official start date of July 1, but had done the necessary prep from an asset and equipment acquisition perspective to be nimble in graphics creation and aggressive with video.
Prior the summer of 2018, we added a graphic artist (Nic Johnson) and really just spent time thinking about what Syracuse Football embodied. We worked closely with football dedicated creatives(Austin Beehner and Ryan Nix) and built a plan around video, motion and still graphics that was implemented right from the start of camp.
Despite a couple of years without being ranked, we knew internally the football team was special and had great potential.
When the wins started to pile up, we were able to create supporting content that engaged our recruits, fans, students and whole community. One concept I loved, and where the creative team graphic artist and lead football artist were able to collaborate, was our game day posters.
For each home game we created a different poster that had a common theme. The posters stood on their own, but when the series was collected and hung, it spelled “ORANGE.” Our fans really enjoyed it and from an engagement perspective, it opened the door for promotion of the upcoming game and helped our reinvigorated tailgate atmosphere on the campus’ Quad.
From a video standpoint, we continued with our visual recaps from our ten victories and then added extended cuts later in the week on hallmark wins. I love how we tell stories with moving images. I understand the current trends are to keep it short and engage in seconds, but some of the biggest reactions we get from video are when people tell us about the goosebumps they have while watching an extended cut. We are currently in production on a longer form season celebration video.
Moving ahead, we feel it is our job to continue to help the upward trajectory of Syracuse Football by telling great stories with engaging art.
2. How important is working with your players on social media to your strategies for enhancing the Syracuse Athletics brand? In what ways do you work with them to help them within context of the program?
I feel branding is about consistency and story. Syracuse’s history is rich. A handful of our athletic teams date back to the 1800s and our University is approaching the 150-year mark.
There have been many slogans, logos and ideas of what Syracuse is over the years, but the Block S has stood the test of time. The University came back to the Block S in the early 2000s, as the primary Athletic mark, and I cannot honestly see us straying from it again. We don’t necessarily get into all the minutiae of Syracuse University’s history with all of our students, but we like them to know they are part of something really special and they are part of the story of a University that is progressive and fiercely competitive in academics and athletics.
We help shape the look and feel for each season, but also feed off the students and how they are helping write the next chapters of Syracuse University Athletics.
Utilizing tools and providing resources like INFLCR for football, women’s and men’s basketball and lacrosse teams, has been a great connector between the creative team and the student-athletes. We are fortunate enough to honor what they do in the classroom and on the field every day, so to be able to deliver that content directly to our student-athletes in a secure and expedient method, is huge for our future.
3. From your perspective, what creative teams other than your own are must-follows on social media?
We are approaching the Golden Age of Athletics Creatives. That may seem overblown, but if you dialed it back five years I don’t how many people would predict the level of art being created every day in collegiate athletics.
I also don’t know if you could imagine the demand for artists, producers and overall creators. Great news for people looking to break into the field. I think we can point to a lot of schools that are really just crushing it from an overall perspective and I’d start with South Carolina, Tennessee and Clemson. I love what Baylor does as well. Mizzou kind of blows me away. We feel we are a newer crew on the block, maybe underdogs a bit, but will be growing and changing with the trends and keeping our core creative values in place while finding a spot with that group.
The best part of the creative field, much like coaching, is that despite how much we all want to win on the field, we can admire each other’s work, learn from it and then continue telling the unique stories of our teams.
More interviews
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John Bednarowski, APSE president
Darren Heitner, sports attorney
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INFLCR is the proud content delivery partner of Syracuse Athletics, providing their creative team with the INFLCR platform to store, track and deliver its content assets through their brand ambassador network of Syracuse student-athletes, alumni, coaches, etc. to grow the brands of these individuals and the Syracuse brand.
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