USA Football has experienced tremendous growth since 2006 when Maroon PR was first hired to assist our communications initiatives. Maroon PR’s expertise, professionalism and follow-through has helped our organization make significant gains in earning editorial by meeting the media’s needs with effective and persistent story pitching. Working hand-in-hand with Maroon PR on a daily basis, we fully anticipate continued excellence in this area. Time and again, Maroon PR proves to understand our business and work well with our employees across the company.
IFAF Junior World Championship
Challenge
The IFAF Junior World Championship was a first-of-its kind event. It was the first time that top high-school aged players from all over the world competed in an international tournament of American football and Maroon PR was tasked with compiling local, regional and national exposure around the tournament the USA Football Junior National team and coaching staff which was headed by legendary high school football coach, Chuck Kyle of Cleveland St. Ignatius. The work included strategic planning and execution, targeted media outreach, story pitching, intense follow-up and managing media requests. The hope was that by generating coverage around the tournament, it would lead to exposure for the tournament throughout the United States and promote USA Football and IFAF’s efforts to globalize America’s favorite sport.
Strategy & Results
In the Summer of 2008, USA Football announced the coaching staff for Team USA, which was comprised of 10 incredibly successful high school coaches from all over the country. Maroon PR found media contacts for each coach’s home market and secured specific local coverage, as well as national coverage around the selections. Maroon PR also secured head coach Chuck Kyle, a 10-time Ohio State Champion football coach in media outlets like Rivals.com, the Sporting News “Recruitnik” blog, among others. Closer to the tournament, Maroon PR secured Coach Kyle on Cleveland and Canton, Ohio television and radio programs to promote the event.
Maroon PR also created a comprehensive national media list, which featured reporters from each coach’s markets, as well as national publications that would be interested in the news (i.e. ESPN Rise, Rivals.com, Scout.com, etc.) and sent weekly updates and news about the Junior World Championship to create and foster relationships with prep media throughout the country. In April of 2009, the roster for Team USA was announced and Maroon PR created targeted media lists for all 45 players, which included the player’s hometown newspapers and newspapers in the town of the college they were going to attend. This led to hundreds of stories around the country announcing the player’s selections, and also led to large-scale features as the tournament got closer.
On top of securing local and regional coverage, Maroon PR sent pitches and secured stories in national publications, like ESPN.com, The Sporting News, USA Today, Sports Illustrated and more. Once the tournament arrived, Maroon PR’s Chris Daley went to the Junior World Championship in Canton to assist with press box duties and worked with the media on-site to facilitate post-game interviews, circulate stats to the media and more. The Maroon PR team also fielded interview requests from all over the country, and put them in contact with the players and coaches for local stories.
With the help of Maroon PR, the Gold Medal game had attendance of 15,473 and the total attendance for the 4-day tournament was 40,043. Media secured for the tournament generated a total of 25,923,949 impressions equaling $1,929,117 in publicity value for the IFAF Junior World Championship. Once the event concluded, Maroon PR compiled all of the coverage and created a media report for USA Football.
USA Football and IFAF will hold the second Junior World Championship in 2012 and every four years thereafter.
Background
The inaugural International Federation of American Football (IFAF) Junior World Championship was an international tournament, comprised of eight teams from eight countries that spanned four continents. This tournament took place from June 27-July 5, 2009, in Canton, Ohio. All of the games were played at historic Fawcett Stadium, adjacent to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The United States team, named the USA Football Junior National team, was comprised of the top 19-and-under athletes in the world. Team USA featured blue chip recruits from the class of 2009, like running back David Wilson (Virginia Tech), linebacker Storm Klein (Ohio State) and Micajah Reynolds (Michigan State). Team USA won the gold medal, defeating Canada 41-3 in the Championship game.
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