By Mike Vorel
Seattle Times staff reporter
Michael Penix Jr.’s Heisman Trophy campaign wasn’t built with billboards that tower above city streets, audacious as each may be. It wasn’t bought and packaged and put on public display over Dallas and New York City.
Which shouldn’t suggest the Huskies have been caught on their heels. After Penix set a school record for passing yards (4,641) and led the nation in passing yards per game (357) in his debut season in Seattle, UW’s athletic department formed a committee in January to position Penix for college football’s premier award.
But in Penix’s case, the campaign predates the committee.
“We started our look at Mike in the back half of last year, after the Oregon game,” said Kasey Byers, UW’s senior director of creative services. “I know a lot of folks were wondering why we waited so long. I think a lot of the focus on Mike last year didn’t come to the forefront nationally until we started to try to push that narrative. It’s hard to do that, too, in the last part of a season. But we knew it was a continuous process.
“Especially once he decided he was coming back, this wasn’t a thing we [suddenly] started.”
The committee — which met every two weeks, beginning in February — comprised Byers, deputy athletic director for external relations Jay Hilbrands, chief of staff Aaron Knotts, assistant athletic director for athletic communications Jeff Bechthold, associate athletic director for content strategy Will Gulley, assistant athletic director for brand advancement Chris Hein and director of social media Hadley Heck.
The goal was to simultaneously amplify Penix’s personality and his play.
“The best way to describe him is, he’s unbelievably authentic,” Byers said of the quarterback, who finished eighth in the Heisman voting last fall. “When you know who the person is, you have to find a way to let other people appreciate him for those qualities. I think we did a good job of capturing Mike’s personality [last season], in the ‘Be Like Mike’ campaign and his announcement video coming back and all that.
“But at the same time, you’ve got a guy that’s extremely talented on the field, is constantly watching film, constantly getting extra work. So as a football player, we wanted to make sure his story is out there too — what kind of leader he is, what kind of player he is.”
So what’s the best way to share that story?
And who needs to see it most?
Byers and Co. organized their audience into two primary groups — “analog” (voters 40 and older) and “digital” (40 and younger). Regarding the former, Byers noted that “some of these people have been voting for decades. I think they appreciate a more traditional way of learning about somebody — news stories, stuff about who they are as people. We talked about, do we do handwritten letters from Mike to those people? Those are things they appreciate.”
The committee also tasked analytics company Talkwalker with creating an AI heat map displaying where conversations surrounding Penix are most (and least) prevalent. Byers noted those tools help the Huskies “go in and see where his conversation is — and not just through social channels, but where he’s being talked about on reddit boards and the locations of those, and podcasts and blog posts and everything you can think of that’s not just social media.
“[The heat map] almost looks like severe thunderstorms rolling in. You’ve got yellow and the red and all that [on a national map]. Mike obviously had big patches of that up here [in Washington], but he also had huge patches down in LA and a large section in the southeast — with his roots in Tampa. So we were able to go in and see the city locations and the number of people talking about him. They get that data by searching thousands of posts. They look at everything. So that allowed us to see where there were holes around the country.”
Despite Penix’s four seasons at Indiana, said holes were primarily situated in the Midwest and East Coast.
But rather than scattering billboards across associated cities, UW attempted to highlight Penix’s personality. The Huskies invited ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg to Seattle last spring to produce a story on Penix. They did the same this summer with podcaster and analyst Adam Breneman — who has 250,000 followers across TikTok, Instagram and X (formerly referred to as Twitter).
“[Breneman’s] audience and his data shows us that he has massive influence in the east coast, which is huge,” Byers said.
Locally, UW struck a deal with the city to produce “Be Like Mike” bus wraps that cruised through Seattle this spring. Pac-12 analyst Yogi Roth went fishing with Penix for a video feature set to air this month as well. And perhaps most importantly, UW connected the quarterback — who prioritizes charitable works — with former ESPN anchor Kenny Mayne and his foundation, “Run Freely,” for an event that raised funds for two veterans to receive devices that will help improve their mobility.
“We’re trying to take care of the West Coast, get some national people involved, some people from the Midwest, some people from the East Coast,” said Byers, who teased more charitable works to come. “We’re doing consistent, meaningful pushes and different creative ways to get him out there.”
Meanwhile, 280 miles south, Oregon has launched a competing campaign for quarterback Bo Nix — involving billboards in Dallas and New York City, a full-page ad in the New York Times and consistently “BOdacious” branding.
But UW’s strategy is comparably understated:
Bring Penix to the people.
“It’s not a knock on [Oregon]. Their approach is … they think Broadway,” Byers said. “I think ours is more about personal relationships. That stems from our head coach. Coach [Kalen] DeBoer is very personable; he’s a family-oriented guy. We try to approach all of our relationships and how we market people that way, where there’s relatability.
“I’ll be honest: I can go back and show you the notes. Doing billboards of Mike in four or five major cities was talked about back in February. In the end, we said, ‘No, we want people to experience Mike. So let’s get him with different people from different parts of the country in different avenues.’”
That strategy resonated with Penix as well. Early on, Byers and Heck produced a full presentation for the senior quarterback and his agent, Reggie Johnson. Byers said “[Johnson] flew out here, Hadley and I sat down with him and Mike together and went over everything — showing data, showing his heat map, showing the phases [of rollouts] we wanted to do. They were blown away.”
But for a quarterback with playoff aspirations, balance is required.
The goal is to bring Penix to the people … but football must come first.
“Mike’s agent is a good guy,” said UW offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Ryan Grubb. “I stay in contact with him, just about management of [off-field obligations] and making sure it isn’t too much and that Mike knows how to say no at times.
“Because Mike’s a really accommodating guy. He wants to be interactive with the fan base. He wants to try to please everybody on some level. So [we’re] just making sure he knows it’s OK for him to say no at times and handle what he has to handle.”
Added Penix last spring, when asked how he handles a Heisman campaign: “It’s just a button [on social media]. I just click retweet. That’s it for me. I don’t really get too focused into it.”
Penix’s focus is fixed on UW’s season opener against Boise State on Saturday — the possible start of a special season.
And if all goes well for No. 10 Washington, we all know where it could lead.
“It’s been fun,” Byers said of Penix’s campaign. “Hopefully he’s one of the five there in New York [for the Heisman ceremony]. We certainly think he should be.”
