Penn Athletics announces Champion Your Life campaign around new rebranding

It might be hard to place a finger on just what it is, but Penn Athletics has a slightly different look these days.

Throughout the semester, the athletic department has rolled out a series of changes to the Quakers’ branding, including the Champion Your Life campaign formally announced on Wednesday.

The culmination of over a year of research and gradual unveiling, the rebranding is part of a holistic effort by Penn Athletics to reinvigorate student interest and reposition itself within the Penn and Greater Philadelphia communities.

“Penn Athletics has created a really unique niche in Philadelphia, in the Ivy League and in the nation,” Athletics Coordinator Julia Martin explained.

With the rebranding, the University hopes to market itself utilizing that niche.

Although the process began in the months leading up to his return to University City in August 2015, former Penn wrestling coach Roger Reina — currently senior associate athletics director for external affairs — has taken the lead in guiding the department through the rebranding along with Martin.

In addition to the external changes, the department’s internal facing is changing as well. Foremost is the set of five core values unifying Penn Athletics: Aiming Big, Character First, Humility, Enjoyment and Community Matters. The primary means this will manifest itself is through the expression of these values in Penn Athletics’ writing and promotions.

In a sense, Martin explained, the goal is to “tell a story through the brand.”

One of the biggest new focuses is on data-driven decision making. To that end, Athletic Director Grace Calhoun brought in Fred Popp, a London-based sports branding specialist who helped the University with the launch of the ‘Split P’ logo 10 years ago.

Reina has played a large role in the precision-based decisions, bringing in his experience working in business development for multiple startups, including TicketLeap.

“To me it was a really exciting opportunity to bring the experiences that I’ve gained in the commercial world and the technology world and come back to a very familiar landscape with a new lens,” Reina noted.

To the athletics administrators, the key is to treat Penn Athletics as a startup, competing for the attention and affection of its audience — in this case the University as a whole.

“We’re in a significant media market so from a standpoint of not only engaging students, but engaging the local community and youth sports teams. We’ve got a tremendous advantage over our friends in Ithaca, for example,” Reina explained. “So I think one thing that’s really important is that we’ve got to be more acutely aware of what our opportunity is to engage today’s students with our sports teams today.”

Around that vision, the objectives of the new rebranding are centered. The purpose of this long-term undertaking is to project a cohesive image to create a sense of familiarity and appreciation for all Penn Athletics teams as a singular unit.

To that end, dozens of executive interviews were conducted with leaders on campus, in addition to surveys of students, athletes and alumni. This legwork has been done to nail down what consumers are looking for out of the Red and Blue — and then fighting like a startup in a crowded market to capitalize on it.

Although administrators were loath to outline a specific set of expectations for the rebranding, Martin would allow that there is one overarching goal for the fan experience.

“The benchmark is unification.”

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