A team of students from The UConn Consulting Group along with the Werth Institute are working to create a new major that could help students build their own personal brands and social media presence.
The idea started when UConn junior and member of the UConn Consulting Group, Atharva Bhatnagar, found out he was to lead a project this semester with UCG. The UConn Consulting Group or USG is comprised of UConn undergraduate students who provide strategy consulting services to UConn organizations, local businesses and corporations.
“I honestly wanted to do something with UConn NIL because as a UConn student, sports are huge here, and that’s a big part of our culture,” Bhatnagar said.
NIL, which stands for Name, Image, Likeness, is a term that describes how collegiate athletes can receive compensation. This could include anything from brand partnerships and product promotions to autograph signings and sponsorship deals.
Bhatnagar discovered a class taught by David Noble, the Founding and Managing Director of The Peter J. Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, that dissects NIL for interested athletes. At the beginning of the semester, he sat in on a lecture.
“He specifically teaches this one class and it’s just athletes, think about Donovon Clingan, Tristan Newton, Samson Johnson like all these athletes who are interested in NIL … David essentially breaks it down for them,” Bhatnagar explained.
After the class, Bhatnagar spoke to Noble about how there may be a gap to fill in UConn’s curriculum.
“Obviously athletes are the main people who would want to do something like this, but there are a lot of other students who might be interested in this, and they just don’t know what to do,” he went on to say.
After realizing that this could be a valuable addition to UConn’s curriculum, Bhatnagar and his team of six from the UConn Consulting Group got to work. The group split into two teams each of which has an associate and two analysts. One team has been focusing on the student side while the other focuses on the university side. Bhatnagar is the project lead, overseeing it all.
“This semester we sat down and created a scope for a project about essentially just creating a new major here at UConn surrounding Influencer Marketing and Personal Branding,” Bhatnagar said.
The group has decided to think about this project in three different phases, the first phase being market research followed by surveys and interviews.
“We have a student survey running and now we are going to actually start conducting a lot of interviews with both faculty, students, UConn influencers, and anyone who is interested in the space to gather more information on what should go into this and then try to create a formal study or curriculum based off that,” Bhatnagar said.
To help them in their research, here is a link to their survey:
UConn Consulting Group Influencer Marketing and Personal Brand Survey
