Beginning in 2019 and continuing through the 2024-25 campaign, I’ve partnered with Ideas United out of Atlanta to concept and write the annual ticket campaign for the NCAA Championship Series. The client sought a templated approach that could be repeated across various NCAA sports. We created more than 270 commercials for TV, digital, social, and radio. Sports included men’s and women’s basketball, women’s gymnastics, baseball, softball, beach volleyball, and more. Our commercials aired nationwide on CBS, ESPN, TBS, and TruTV.

My role: My role evolved over the time I worked on the NCAA Championship series campaign. At first, I was writing scripts under the existing campaign: ‘The NCAA Universe’. This required tailoring the campaign language to fit 13 tier one sports and for various executions, including TV, radio, digital, and social. Then in 2021, I led the concept creation of Fandom 101, and we shifted from doing a new campaign each year to doing a continuous campaign that built on itself with each season. I continued to write the scripts but also leaned into art direction and more broad creative direction of the campaign. I was the primary presenter to the NCAA client and met with marketing teams from each sport to discuss how we best speak to their fans. I encouraged NCAA to share audience research and better hone our media plan to make sure the creative was reaching the appropriate audience at the appropriate time. I shepherded our first foray into a live production in 2022, where I was the primary creative working with production to secure talent and block out the three-day shoot. In 2023, I pitched broadening the campaign and shooting on a college campus. I worked with production to secure Emory University’s campus in Atlanta. I wrote the line “Attendance is encouraged. Passion is mandatory”, which NCAA used for all three years of the Fandom 101 campaign. During my time working on NCAA, we navigated the Covid pandemic and rule changes about in-game attendance as well as the launch of Name Image and Likeness, which dramatically changed the rules of what game footage we could use as b-roll.