NIL Interview: Elisabeth Brown

"NIL Interviews” is an exclusive series that delves into the evolving landscape of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). Through insightful conversations with key stakeholders the series explores strategies, challenges, and opportunities shaping the future of NIL in collegiate sports.

NILNewsstand: Can you tell us a little bit about your role at Kansas State with the women's basketball team and NIL?

Elisabeth: Coach Mittie brought me on about a year ago and he wanted someone in a role to basically be the liaison between our team and our coaching staff and our collective.

But the with all of the changes that happened with NIL, it really also turned into working on creating events for our team to do fundraising, as well as networking with our community and really almost being an educational person for our community, season ticket members and businesses to learn how they can be a part of our program in a different way.

From a team aspect, the first year was heavy education and teaching. Looking at platforms like Opendorse and going “Hey, this is what Opendorse is and this is how you can navigate that.” I try giving them as many tools as I can to also network and brand themselves because really at the end of day, I want them to learn how to advocate for themselves.

NILNewsstand: How do you start to formalize a NIL plan for an athlete and what opportunities are available?

Elisabeth: I start when I find out that we're recruiting certain individuals.

For example, like today we got a text that we have two recruits coming in at different times. Prior to their visit, I'll go on to their social media. I have a form and I will keep track of how many followers they have and certain brands that they already follow.

I'll write down tips that if they were to come to our program, what we already need to start working on, whether that be “Let's have a profile picture that's basketball related during basketball season”, or “Let's have story highlights that are tailored to basketball”. So I start pretty much researching and vetting these girls, the minute I know.

And then I keep that all the way up till I know they're either coming to our program or if they decide to go elsewhere. If they come to our program, which hopefully they do, I will send them a Google form when they officially get here and going, that basically has them list out brands that they want to work with and goals for themselves for their brand.

Once school starts, I bring them in and I go over it and I really hone in too. “Okay, this is your big picture. Let's focus in on this area or let’s hone in on these companies.” For example, I know that one athlete loves food. So I will tell her “Let's focus on three food companies that we can get you a deal with.”

Or, “Hey, you really like to work with spas. We have two spas within our Manhattan area. Let's get you signed into a trade deal.”

Now, those social media forms that I use, I will continue to do research throughout the year and continue to have one on one meetings with them going, “Okay, it's basketball season, we need to change our header on Twitter. We need to change a profile picture. We need to start tagging our collective in posts." If they use Gatorade, “Let's tag Gatorade”. So I will have one on one meetings with them probably three to four times from August to December.

And then I'll meet with them probably once or twice a month, every month starting in January. And if I can't meet with them due to our schedule, I send a picture and say, “Hey, you all need to get this going and we need to update all of this.”

I always get the question “Do you do that every year?” Yes, because people's goals change, people's idea of NIL changes, people's values change. I want to make sure the freshmen student athletes can be different from when they're a senior, their values are going to change.

They might be looking towards getting a full-time job, maybe not playing basketball or whatever the case may be. I want to make sure that we are working with brands that represent them at the time that they are in their life.

NILNewsstand: What advice would you give to parents to help their child, regardless of what school they're going to, to be prepared for this new world of NIL?

Elisabeth: I would probably say it's never too late for your child to start investing in themselves.

Nowadays even with from an educational standpoint you have high schools offering college credit where these high school seniors are graduating and they are graduating with a lot of hours that are counted towards college. They're coming in as college sophomores or even college juniors. If you're going to invest in your kid academically or your student athlete academically, then you can also invest in them from a branding standpoint.

I would say spend a couple of minutes talking to your kids about NIL and what brands they want to work with and make sure that their social medias are clean because there are athletes out there that may not get deals because of what their social media looks like.

Second is take the time for those brands that your student athlete uses all the time. Take the time and tag those brands because nothing harmful is going to come from that. Their social media person is going to see it and they may like it. That's the worst thing that can happen. But if you start doing that, then when you do get a meeting with you know, a Gatorade or with a Nike or whatever, you can show the receipts of “Yeah, we've been using this product X amount of times. And this is how I see that it benefits me.” Kids love posting what they're doing on social media anyways.

NILNewsstand: What do you think is the biggest misconception about NIL right now?

Elisabeth: I would probably say that you can only invest in an athlete by writing them a blank check. I think that's the biggest misconception.

I think a lot of businesses turn the other way because they don't know how they fit into this NIL space.

For example, we have a company here who I met with and they love women's basketball. They never miss a game. They travel to all of our games and they were like, “Elisabeth, we want to do something. We don't want to write a check. We want the girls to come into our shop and we want to meet the girls and we want to provide them a space to come and study and relax.”

And I said, well, that's fine. This business is a coffee shop. I said “Why don't we sign the girls to X amount and the girls can come in, they can do an appearance when you have your grand opening at a different location and they'll get a free cup of coffee every time they come in."

And that's what we ended up doing. They signed a set amount of girls to an NIL value amount. And the whole rest of the team is getting a free coffee card. And so in their minds (the coffee shop owners) “Well, I just have to write a check.” That's not 100 percent the case.

I think that's the biggest thing is companies don't want to get involved because they go, “Oh, I have to write a check or I don't have these big amounts of money.” You see a star athlete landing for millions of dollars to go from one school to another. I think brands get scared by that and they go “We're just a baby fish in this shark fest.”

I think its important for the people like me to really ensure these companies that there is a spot for them to be a part of this movement.

NILNewsstand: Are there metrics or KPIs (key performance indicators) you track to measure the success of your NIL program?

Elisabeth: I would say yes and no. I would love to measure how successful our program is from an NIL standpoint like I did when I worked in social media, but it's kind of like, how do you measure that per position and per athlete. Some girls don't like to do certain things. In return, I put measures on each girl individually, not so much as the team.

Each individual has different goals and you can see that on the conversations you have and their forms. I want them to have their expectations to also kind of meet who they are as a person. It is easy to just want to get money, but this space is unique to these student athletes, because it allows them to tap into a side that they may not use. I tell my team all the time, the overall brand should represent you as a person.  

NILNewsstand: Some schools are just hiring their very first NIL directors. You’ve been in the space for awhile now, what advice or best practices have served you well so far in your role?

Elisabeth: Yeah, I would say definitely creating the forms. When I came in and granted that's not going to work for every director and I totally get that. But when I came in, I was kind of almost a late hire where like my first day was like the first day of school. I missed a lot of practices where I could be around the girls. The biggest one is just getting a student athlete branding form started because that way you'll get a good glimpse of who your athletes are.

You get a picture of them, of their heart and soul off of the court versus their passion on the court. You get to really know them from a different standpoint from literally one 10 minute survey. I would say definitely establishing something like that where you can really get a glimpse of your student athletes off of the court.

Then I would also say creating an NIL marketing deck that lists different ideas for organizations or businesses to get involved in. I have screenshots for it (the deck). For example, Ayoka Lee has a deal with a spa in town and she did a whole social media campaign for them.

So on the side of the deck, it's “Partner with our student athletes via social media.” And then it has screenshots of “Here's Ayoka Lee doing an Instagram story. Here's Ayoka Lee's feed posts.” And so I say definitely creating something like that for brands to see “Okay, this is how we can partner with them” is a great start.

I think again back to my one misconception is I think when you just send out an email I think they're gonna go “Oh, they're looking for a donation or they're looking for us to build another building” or something like that versus providing examples. Picture examples are always the best way to go.

Be patient with yourself because this landscape is constantly changing. You've got to give yourself some patience and grace because one thing is going to be decided one day and then two weeks later the NCAA is going to say something different or your conference is going to say something different. Definitely giving yourself some grace and patience for sure.

NILNewsstand: Where do you see NIL going the next several years?

Elisabeth: I think the NIL space is not going anywhere. I think it's here to stay. I get that question a lot, “Do you think NIL is going to go away?” No, I think eventually the collective is maybe going to be working more with the university and maybe get absorbed by the university.

Again, this is all my opinion. I don't know any of this for a fact, but I think that’s kind of what's going to happen. I think you're going to see more student athletes do stuff with the collective and I think it's gonna be more promoting the university. I think that's where it's going to shift.

I would definitely love to see the director spot grow. My dream would be that there's like an associate AD over NIL or student branding and then a bunch of other people kind of fall under there. All of us, we're one person and we can only do so much for our team, but when you put a lot of different people's brains together, a lot more can happen.

I think if the college landscape really took the time to develop this space when the time comes, I think that'd be really good as well. Overall, we are all here to be an asset to our college athletes. That is the pride and joy I take from my job. This space may continue to change, or it may stay the same, but I know that I will continue to be here for my team as well as coaching staff.

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