Close Up
Broadening media presence of Bulls
Anucha Browne Sanders says her main challenge when she arrived at UB was reviving the somewhat dormant UB Bulls brand. Photo: NANCY J. PARISI
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“The three roles combined are a unique fit because you really do get your hand into all of the elements of the athletic program.”
As the UB Bulls have been charging across fields and courts during the past two years, they also have been dominating print, broadcast, Internet and social media arenas. The wide presence of UB’s football and basketball teams has been aggressively coordinated by Anucha Browne Sanders, senior associate athletic director for marketing.
Arriving here in 2007, she brought more than a decade of sports marketing expertise with IBM Corp. and the New York Knicks basketball team. Her job at UB is similar to her role with the Knicks: overseeing ticket marketing and sales, sponsor partnerships, community relations, game promotions, and the entertainment and events surrounding the games.
Browne Sanders says the main challenge she saw when she arrived on campus was breathing life into a somewhat dormant Bulls brand. “It was clear from the point that I got here that we didn’t have a presence in our marketplace and a lot of that was the high cost of traditional media buys,” she says.
The first order of business was to partner with an agency with national purchasing power that would provide UB Athletics much better advertising rates for much more aggressive media buying in the Western New York marketplace. Beyond the broad sweep of print, radio and TV advertising, database marketing on the Internet has been heavily explored—marketing to specific databases populated by sports enthusiasts. Social networking on Facebook, Twitter and via mobile texting are non-traditional ways of marketing that UB Athletics has embraced. Even creative grassroots marketing, like hang tags on door and sidewalk posters, alert the campus community to upcoming games.
The campaign theme that has blanketed the community is “blue collar” football and basketball—capturing the spirit of a city and region built on the blue-collar work ethic. “We see it as a rallying cry in terms of respect and hard work,” says Browne Sanders. “When you come to see football or basketball (at UB), you’re going to see that type of hard work, blood, sweat and tears that has really come to define Buffalo. It’s a rallying cry for Buffalonians to really get behind their team.”
The results have been outstanding. The football program has had the highest attendance in its history. Before the first game of 2009 was played, the Bulls already had met their MAC East attendance requirements, based on the tickets sold prior to the season opener. Of course, being 2008 MAC Champions certainly helped the drive.
“Winning teams make a huge difference,” she agrees. “We have a team here that competes harder than anyone and a coach who is phenomenal from his ‘xs and os’ to what he’s able to teach these guys off the field and how they live their lives. It’s just an incredible coaching staff.”
Beyond her marketing role, the warm, soft-spoken Browne Sanders also works in the area of sports administration, overseeing a number of UB sports and serving as senior woman administrator. “The three roles combined are a unique fit because you really do get your hand into all of the elements of the athletic program,” she says.
Her transition to the collegiate environment has been phenomenal, she says. “I love it. I feel like I found where I’m really supposed to be. I enjoy working with student athletes, the challenges of bringing crowds to the arena, and resurrecting the brand and working to make sure that the student, staff and faculty experience at UB athletic events is positive.”
Sports marketing has been a passion of Browne Sanders since her days in the early 1980s at Northwestern University as a communications major and a basketball star holding all-time Big Ten conference records for scoring (2,307 points) and rebounds (951).
Her first several years out of school, however, found her in a technology sales role, first at Eastman Kodak, then at IBM, where she spent 11 years. It was good, she says, for experiencing life at the end of the food chain with the product end-user. Midway through her tenure, she finally had an opportunity to exercise her sports marketing chops, moving into technology marketing for the 1996, 1998 and 2000 Olympics with IBM, a long-time sponsor. She also worked on a number of other IBM-sponsored sports properties with the National Hockey League and the Grand Slams of tennis.
IBM also happened to be a sponsor of the National Basketball Association and in particular the New York Knicks—an organization that got to know her and eventually recruited her as vice president of marketing.
Her first two years of her five-year stint were very positive, Browne Sanders recalls. She had a good relationship with general manager Scott Layden, who she characterizes as an individual who brought class to the workplace. “Together we tried to build an organization that was classy and treated people right,” she says. After a year and a half, she was promoted to senior vice president of marketing and business relations, basically becoming the team’s business manager and overseeing all revenues—from sponsor sales, to TV and radio rights, to concessions and merchandise sales, as well as marketing the brand. She became one of the most powerful female black executives in pro sports in the U.S.
Then suddenly, Layden was fired and Isiah Thomas was hired, and Browne Sanders saw a completely different approach to the workplace emerge—an atmosphere of disrespect that ended with her firing in January 2006 because of complaints she had made.
Several days later, she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Thomas and Knicks owner Madison Square Garden. The suit claimed that Thomas sexually harassed her, beginning with his hiring, and further claimed that her firing was in retaliation for her complaints about the alleged harassment.
In October 2007, a jury returned a verdict finding Thomas and MSG liable for sexual harassment. Although the defendants indicated they would appeal the verdict, two months later the federal lawsuit had been settled for a reported $11.5 million.
The victorious high-profile lawsuit has followed Browne Sanders in search engine references, but she says she’s fine about discussing the issue. “I’m proud of what I did and what I stood for, and hopefully it will have a positive effect on women in situations that are not fair, conducive or respectful,” she states. “I think it was a landmark decision because most women don’t win sexual harassment lawsuits. It’s just kind of the nature of the lawsuit. It’s so hard to prove what you’re saying because most of the time the behavior in sexual harassment cases is sneaky or basically comes down to a he said/she said. But here, I think, the proof was compelling. The testimonies were compelling. And so I was victorious. I wasn’t only victorious for me because it did redeem my name, but I felt that the result of the lawsuit was a victory that really sent a message across all industry in the United States: a message to treat people respectfully, both men and women, and that certain things are just unacceptable, regardless of what industry you’re in.”
She says she continues to receive letters and phone calls on a weekly basis from women who are struggling with such situations and don’t know what to do. “The fact of the matter is this continues to go on in certain places,” she says. “I also see (the decision) as a victory for men. Anybody who has a mother or daughter or sister who goes to work every day was compelled by what they heard in this case, and many men were very angry because they don’t act like that. It was also a rallying cry for men who are respectful in the workplace.”
The UB opportunity came along during the litigation when athletics director Warde Manuel, whom she had met during her IBM Olympic project days when he was working on a professional development program for the U.S. Olympic Committee, offered her a position in UB Athletics. “I said sure, I would come take a look,” she recalls. “When I came up here, I thought it would be a great place for me, and this has worked out really nicely. We’re enjoying it here. I have three kids and they’re happy and thriving. The community here has embraced me and my children from the very start. Williamsville has been good to us. My children are in the school system and have wonderful friends. It’s a great community.”
She characterizes the environment in UB Athletics and the university itself as extremely positive. “I think we have a tremendous, tremendous potential in Western New York. It’s a wonderful environment. I think our best days are clearly ahead of us,” she says. “I think Warde Manuel and President Simpson have done a phenomenal job to bring the programs here to a completely different level. With that comes higher and higher expectations. Warde does such a great job in filtering what his expectations are down to the staff. He really is a great listener and is always willing to receive input. And that’s positive. When you have that kind of leadership, you know that you’re going to be successful.”
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