Clemson University Athletics Scores Big with Adobe Slate #madewithslate
When he joined Clemson University’s Athletics Department in 2013 as Director of New and Creative Media, Jonathan Gantt faced a number of challenges.
- His department had to cover 19 sports teams representing 500 student athletes.
- He needed to ensure that the department’s 55 social media accounts and multiple websites did an exceptional job of promoting the university’s brand.
- He needed to keep content fresh, interesting and visually appealing in order to promote active engagement with four key audiences: current student athletes, prospective student athletes, fans and potential fans.
- And he needed to deliver content that could be viewed on any device.
Clemson provides Adobe Creative Cloud accounts for its students, faculty and staff. One day, while exploring the many creative tools available to him, Gantt discovered Adobe Slate.
“I fell in love immediately,” he says of the storytelling web and iPad app. “It’s so easy to use and yet it makes content look so beautiful. Everything pops off the page.”
Gantt first used Slate to create an internal proposal, and it was so well received that he decided to start using Slate to showcase football games. Now, he’s using Slate to create three key communications:
- Informational pieces for recruiting
- Feature stories about Clemson teams
- Fan-generated content
Rich content, visual appeal
Gantt says Slate is ideal because it presents stories in a more impactful way — and with its unique, high-quality design, Slate makes his content stand out from the noise.
“I can combine photos, graphics, links to multimedia, links to sites and text in an engaging way,” he says.
The ability to share Slates is key for Gantt as well. Athletes and fans are sharing the Slates to their social media circles, which increases visibility and deepens engagement with the content.
“WE’RE THINKING MOBILE FIRST, AND WITH SLATE WE HAVE A PLATFORM THAT MAKES CONTENT LOOK VISUALLY STUNNING ON BOTH MOBILE AND DESKTOP,” HE SAYS.
Gantt appreciates the way Slate empowers a small creative and communications staff to do more — and do it more efficiently.
“We can deliver parallax scrolling that really captures people’s attention, something you don’t really see in many websites. It separates us from the crowd, and yet we don’t have to learn complicated web coding.”
“SLATE MAKES US LOOK LIKE WE HAVE SEVERAL WEB DESIGNERS AND DEVELOPERS ON STAFF BUT REALLY ANYONE CAN USE IT EFFECTIVELY."
He’s received rave reviews of his Slates from Clemson executives, board members, student athletes, fans and even peers at competing schools.
“They all ask, ‘How do you do that?’” he says. “When you get that kind of unanimous positive feedback, it’s incredible.”
A big win for athletics and beyond
What’s next for Clemson and Adobe Slate? Gantt’s mission is to empower everyone in the athletic department to use Slate, and also to encourage students throughout the university to use the app as a platform to tell their stories.
Word is getting out. The Clemson volleyball team’s coaching staff was about to spend a significant amount of money to create a website for recruiting purposes, but after seeing Gantt’s successes, they decided to use Slate instead. Similarly, a student athlete recently used Slate to create an attention-grabbing visual story for a class.
“At Clemson,” Gantt says, “we’ve just begun scratching the surface of what we can do with Slate.”