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Intelligence
The Story of Murray State Basketball

Intelligence

The Story of Murray State Basketball

Feb 21, 2012By Michael Stoner

The story of the Murray State University basketball team’s march to a 2012 championship season is still being written: right now, the Racers are ranked #12 in the NCAA. But theres no doubt that the universitys Murray State Anthem has already triumphed. The rap video, produced to build support for the team and exposure for the university, has already gone viral and is poised for even more views if the Racers continue to win games.

Murray State, located in Murray, KY, is a four-year public university that enrolls nearly 11,000 students. Its well-known for its basketball program, cited by ESPN as one of the top 30 basketball programs in modern history. The Racers have made 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, most recently in 2010, when Murray State defeated Vanderbilt and won its second NCAA tournament game.

Last fall, Dana Howard, who manages social media for the university, said, “We heard students talking about a rap song written about the basketball team by two students who rap as Trubz ‘N’ Matlock. When we realized that they didn’t have a professional video version of the song, we quickly asked them if they wanted us to help them produce one.” Howard was hoping that the video would support the teams success and raise awareness about Murray State. Little did she know what was to come.

Murray State Digital Media Services too about two weeks to shoot, edit, and produce the video. In addition to Trubz ‘N’ Matlock, it features students, the Murray State mascot, the cheerleaders/dance team—and, of course, the basketball team.

The premiere

Murray State Anthem” premiered at a home game right before the team came out on the floor and the crowd, young and old, stood and danced. Then, Howard pushed out the url for the YouTube version via Twitter and Facebook during half-time.

She reports, “In less than 24 hours, we had 10,000 hits on the video and in 10 days, more than 80,000; 1500 mentions of the official name “Murray State Anthem” on Twitter; 400 shares on Facebook. And in the next week the song had been embedded and talked about on many national blogs, including Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, SBNation, NBC Sports, and USAToday. And countless sports bloggers have tweeted about it.”

Indeed, when I Googled Murray State Anthem, mention of the video on USA Todays Campus Rivalry blog was the second result. Blogger Nicole Auerbach remarked, Yes, the Racers are good at basketball. The whole undefeated and ranked in the Top 10 thing is great, but not as awesome as this video.

Howard adds, “On the blogs, the video has been compared with those from other universities, but more importantly, in one contest, it was mentioned along with the Giants SuperBowl Anthem. Since this happened during the week of the SuperBowl, I believe it put us in some of the top web searches at that time. And CBS picked it up and will use the anthem video on their weekly shows in the weeks leading to the NCAA tourney.”

Some of the people involved with “Murray State Anthem” show off the hashtag shirts that have become quite the item on the university’s campus.

Swag

About those t‑shirts. Murray State created t‑shirts to thank everyone involved with the video. Howard said. “The front of the t‑shirt includes our sub-branding (We Are Racers) in a new format, WAR, which well use through the remainder of the year. On the back of the shirts, we printed some of the hashtags that MSU alumni, students, and staff used in tweets during this years basketball season.”

She noted, In a way, the t‑shirts provide a timeline of this historical season for us, including the song #MurrayStateAnthem, which is now a unique milestone in the season all its own. University staff and the rappers from the video wore the hashtag t‑shirts to the game the night of the “Murray State Anthem” video debut. The campus bookstore decided to print them—and now, theyre a top-seller. And of course, Howard said, We also used the shirts as prizes for 50 lucky people who shared the video on Facebook or Twitter.”


Hashtags used on the t‑shirts are showing up in other university materials, such as these banners. One banner represents the season, the other banner a definition (in hashtags) of what Murray State stands for or how people recognize it.

Lessons Learned

So what lessons did Murray State learn from this experience?

Howard observes that the video provides insights into the culture, creativity, and spirit on campus in a way that a win for its basketball team wont. There are elements that come together in the video—the student rappers along with the other participants, not to mention the production values. And theres timing and luck, too: We decided we had to plan and push this out at the peak of the national buzz. It was perfect: immediately after we released the video, we became the only undefeated team in the nation. That created the perfect stage for the song, the video and the marketing that complemented it.

So to me, the formula looks like this: opportunity + creativity + hard work + timing + luck = success. Maybe the Racers themselves will take a similar path in the remaining weeks of the NCAA.

Note: Many thanks to Dana Howard, who brought Murray State Anthem to my attention.


  • Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?