On-field product placement

Between innings at a Utah Valley State baseball game last season, many fans were ecstatic to see a number of balls dropped on the grass.

They weren't dropped by the opposing team's fielders, mind you. As part of a promotional event, a helicopter dropped hundreds of foam balls onto the field. The owner of the ball that landed closest to a target won a new car.

As a result, the Wolverines saw home-game attendance rise dramatically the next time they took the field.

"We'll try just about anything to try to get people out here," said Erin Stancliff, director of marketing and promotions at UVSC. "Our mission is to get people in the seats."

The athletic marketing departments at UVSC and BYU have a common goal — selling collegiate athletics in Utah Valley. Although the two departments vary greatly in size, scope and budget, many of their duties and aims are the same.

"One of the main goals is to help generate revenue within the athletic department," said David Almodova, the new director of athletic marketing at BYU. "It's about working the right way as far as how we market and promote our teams here on campus. Our athletes here are great in every way, and they deserve to be marketed in the best way that we can."

Those marketing efforts include everything from billboards on I-15 to refrigerator magnets displaying team schedules.

With UVSC's efforts focused mainly toward students on campus, the marketing department has gone so far as to travel door-to-door to get the word out about Wolverine athletics.

"We just want to get people to come back," Stancliff said. "That's what we're focusing on, is making sure that the game is fun for everyone. We really have to think outside of the box."

Breaking out of the box is a common mind-set for athletic marketers in an age where schools post billboards in neighboring states and pay to have monstrous posters of athletes hanging in Times Square. Over the past 20 or 30 years, a marketing explosion has taken place, thrusting collegiate athletics into the limelight as more than just a venue for displaying physical prowess.

"We are an entertainment business," Stancliff said. "In the sports marketing industry, we compete with everything — with the movies, with high school events. We have to work twice as hard to try and think of things that will distinguish us from everybody else."

Almodova agreed, noting current trends and the enormous revenue that athletics can produce.

"Mainstream marketing has become very popular," he said. "People are thinking outside the box more with what they're doing. The money that's being generated now ... I don't see it slowing down."