Aspire’s Outsourced Social Media Management Wins AVA Digital Award

ATLANTA, GA – For a third consecutive year, the AVA Awards have recognized The Aspire Group (Aspire) for outstanding achievement in digital marketing. Aspire won a 2023 Gold Award for their outsourced social media management of the USA Rugby 7’s Collegiate Championships, an event they co-founded in 2021.

Sanctioned by USA Rugby and its Collegiate Council, the two-day event was the first of its kind, serving as the official national championship tournament for both men’s and women’s collegiate 7s teams and welcoming nearly 1,000 athletes from more than 60 teams to the metro Atlanta area in May of 2022. Aspire’s marketing team played an integral role in the success of the event, collaborating with partners on all digital marketing and design strategy, while managing content production and post cadences across official social media accounts.

By building a unique brand presence that resonated with tight-knit club and collegiate rugby communities, while also speaking to regional sports and leisure seekers unfamiliar with the sport, Aspire’s efforts generated more than 250,000 website views, 800,000 social media impressions, and 1.2M live broadcast viewers during the tournament. Aspire formed connections with expatriate and interest groups in the region, leading to an authentic international atmosphere that welcomed 13,000+ fans.

 “Thank you once again to the AVA Digital Awards for recognizing Aspire’s Strategy, Analytics, and Marketing (SAM) department,” said Aspire’s President & CEO, Bill Fagan. “Our SAM team has long been known across the sports industry for their ability to pinpoint fan concerns and expectations while providing meaningful consultative recommendations. This latest recognition shows that SAM’s abilities in digital marketing can and will fill venues and drive best in class fan connections for sport & entertainment brands for years to come.”

Aspire also won a Gold award from the AVA in 2022 for their White Paper, Improving Your Venue’s Yield By Emphasizing Value. In 2021, Aspire’s analysis and recommendations around athletic department donor activity won them Gold, while their report on fan concerns and expectations during the COVID-19 pandemic received the AVA’s highest honor of Platinum.

About AVA Digital Awards

AVA Digital Awards is an international competition that recognizes outstanding work by creative professionals involved in the concept, direction, design, and production of media that is part of the evolution of digital communication. The Awards began in 1994 as a celebration of the audio-visual arts and have shifted over the years to recognize the expanding role that digital media and the web play in the transfer of information. AVA Digital Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing & Communication Professionals. Judges are industry professionals who look for companies and individuals whose talent exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry. The 2023 edition of the awards included approximately 2,500 entries.

For more information about the AVA Digital Awards, visit their website.

About The Aspire Group
The Aspire Group is an award winning sports and entertainment marketing firm, named as a top employer in the industry by both Forbes and Front Office Sports. Globally recognized for innovative consulting, ticket sales, and partnership services, Aspire created the outsourced ticket sales niche, revolutionizing with its first Fan Relationship Management Center (FRMC) at Georgia Tech in 2009. Over the past 15 years, more than 300 collegiate and professional sports properties have trusted Aspire to drive revenue, attendance, and enterprise-value growth through the combination of strategic consulting and research, sales and service training, and best-in-industry fan relationship management.

For more information about The Aspire Group visit: www.theaspiregroupinc.com and Follow us on Twitter @theaspire_group

For project and partnership inquiries, contact A.J. Smith at aj.smith@theaspiregroupinc.com or Joe Kronander at joe.kronander@theaspiregroupinc.com