Becoming more than an athlete: developing an athlete's personal brand using strategic philanthropy

ABSTRACT

Research Question: The current research examined the effect of an athlete promoting his philanthropic efforts to his Instagram followers. Specifically, we assessed how adopting this strategy impacted his followers’ perceptions of, and level of fandom towards, his personal brand.

Research Methods: We used a longitudinal research design including a pre-intervention survey, an intervention, and a post-intervention survey separated by a six-month interval. We analysed free-thought brand associations, perceptions of athlete philanthropy, and levels of fandom reported by an athlete's Instagram followers from two independent samples (N_T1 = 165; N_T2 = 172) and a longitudinal sample (N = 32).

Results and Findings: Results indicated that the athlete's promotion of his philanthropic activities positively impacted his brand image. This change was characterized by a shift from the prominence of sport-specific brand attributes to perceptions of overall character. In addition, followers reported increased perceptions of the athlete's engagement in philanthropy, and stronger levels of overall fandom towards the athlete.

Research Implications: Findings demonstrated the promotion of philanthropic activities impacted the brand associations consumers linked to the athlete's personal brand, and strengthened the overall connection between the athlete and his followers. Findings extend athlete branding knowledge and provide practical implications to inform how athletes and agents may implement social media brand management.

KEYWORDS:

• Athlete brands
• athlete philanthropy
• brand image
• sport consumers
• social media

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful for the support from the Sport Industry Research Center at Temple University and appreciate the feedback from three anonymous reviewers and the European Sport Management Quarterly editorial team.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).