Fox Sports and Microsoft tap the social media savvy of Foster undergrads

Americans love to watch sports—football, baseball, soccer, basketball, hockey or all of the above.

But how can technology make the fan experience even richer?

Fox Sports University and Microsoft brought this question to the students in Abhishek Borah’s MKT 301 Marketing Concepts class at the UW Foster School of Business this year.

Specifically they challenged the Foster undergrads to research the sports and technology landscape and prepare and deliver a presentation on how Microsoft can market its OneNote digital note-taking app as a means of enhancing the experience of everyday sports fans.

Six of 12 teams in the class got to present their ideas to executives from Microsoft OneNote and Fox Sports, including lead college football analyst Joel Klatt. Klatt kicked off the project by demonstrating his exhaustive preparation for live television commentary to give students ideas on how OneNote could be used by anyone who wants to dig deeper into the sports they love.

The winning team—Michael Jacobson, Michelle Henderson, Wendy Leuthold, Lucy Reilly, Guillermo Andre Condemarin, Xuan Yi Zhu and Sergey Velichuk—devised the most convincing marketing strategy to bring OneNote into the sports fan zone.

“This was a great opportunity to create a great solution for powerful brands like Fox Sports and Microsoft,” says Danny Gavin, a student in the class.

The OneNote challenge was Foster’s second collaboration with Fox Sports University. Last year, Borah’s class partnered with Fox Sports and the USGA and devised social media plans to promote the 2015 U.S. Open golf championship at Chambers Bay.

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