Due to lack of funding, the Colonel athletic marketing team maximizes partnerships and networking to help promote the Colonels.
Associate Athletic Director of External Affairs Brandon Ruttley, Assistant Athletic Director of Communications Mike Wagenheim, Ticket Manager Tyler Knowles, Ticket Intern Jordan Trosclair and Sports Information Directors Clyde Verdin and Jamie Bustos all contribute to the marketing for Colonel Athletics. Ruttley tried to promote athletics on his own, but due to lack of funding and human resources, he had to find ways to get around obstacles.
“I think it helps in any organization where everyone has a hand in it or an emotional investment,”  Wagenheim said. “It is more of a guarantee that everyone wants to see it be more successful.”
The first aspect of marketing is social media. The team constantly posts stories from other local newspapers and their own to their social media pages. One of the main goals is to make sure people have Nicholls in the back of their heads.
“When we promote other newspapers, it gives them 5,000 extra eyes, so then that makes them want to do more Nicholls stories,” Wagenheim said.
Wagenheim had a huge hand in starting a weekly television show on Cox Sports Network that reaches over two million homes ranging from Texas to Virginia. Athletics has built relationships with different radio networks as well, including KNSU, KXOR FM, KLEB AM and KLRZ FM. State Representative Jerry Gisclair owns KLRZ FM and KLEB AM and is letting Nicholls broadcast games for free.
Wagenheim smirked and said, “Politicians get a bad name, but there are good ones out there and Jerry is one of them.”
KLRZ is the flagship station for Nicholls athletics and broadcasts at 89,000 watts, expanding to New Orleans and the surrounding areas.
“We would not likely have been able to afford the coverage we get on KLRZ, but Jerry was kind enough to air our games for free,” Wagenheim said. “We, as a public institution, are not allowed to pay them, even if we could.”
Another politician who has helped Nicholls in several ways is State Senator Norby Chabert. He is a mass communication graduate from Nicholls and has donated money to help improve the campus. He was able to obtain money for renovations on the Mary A. Danos Theatre and played a role in securing the 1.2 million dollars for the fields on campus, which he and Governor Jindal announced at the Manning Passing Academy in July.
Wagenheim said that Chabert has been a “Godsend to us.”
The team has taken some risks with their marketing approach. During last baseball season, Tyler Knowles and former intern Zack Carlton collaborated to bring the Fifth Inning Yeti to life. Carlton specialized in video, so he would make different videos promoting the Yeti. Knowles had the idea inspired from a minor league baseball team who created their own mascot and sparked the Fifth Inning Yeti.
“It started off as just having the yeti run out on to the field for the fifth inning, and then we started getting national attention on different blogs because people were talking about the Yeti,” Ruttley said.
The only problem the marketing team saw was making people forget that Colonel Tillou is the Nicholls mascot. They made a friendly rivalry between the two and this year they have made the mascot challenge. The Yeti and Tillou have completed a series of challenges, which have appearances from Head Football Coach Charlie Stubbs and Head Women’s Basketball Coach Dobee Plaisance.
“Sometimes you need gimmicks to get people to talk about you,” Ruttley said.
Another goal is reaching out to different groups and even countries. Nicholls is currently working on reaching a deal with ESPN Australia for men’s basketball because of the amount of natives on the roster. Two of the games will be broadcasted on ESPN 3 on the internet in Australia, but athletics is looking to get the games on TV over there in the future.
Nicholls has increased attendance for games over the last couple of years, but Ruttley wants to see the attendance to keep increasing. In the next few years he has hopes of having about 8,000 people in the stands for football and roughly 1,000 for the other ticketed sports. Ruttley believes athletics is the marketing arm for the university and that when the Colonels are winning, the value of diplomas and the outreach increases.
The marketing team has reached out to different groups to help season ticket sales. Trosclair has been reaching out to different civic, local, corporate organizations to help increase ticket sales.
Ruttley has his long-term goals, but Wagenheim is the opposite, saying he just takes things “24 hours at a time because things can change, such as getting a new president.”
All the people involved have their roles in the marketing and reaching out.
“Everyone brings something extra. Tyler is creative with funny stuff, Mike is a constant workhorse who puts information out there. Jamie and Clyde do a mix of both,” Ruttley said.