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Does Duke have the strongest brand in college basketball today? It’s hard to argue otherwise.
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Granted, a few other teams that wear blue might quibble with that. But the Duke’s men’s basketball program has something the others do not:
“The Brotherhood.”
Those two words link together Duke teams and players across decades. It’s a two-word phrase constantly used and marketed, and one that has been taken to heart by those who have played at Duke. It’s one used to pitch to recruits, whether high school phenoms or, now, those sought in the NCAA portal.
When Zion Williamson first committed to the Blue Devils in a January 2018 press conference at his high school in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the big man said, “I will be joining ‘The Brotherhood’ at Duke University. The Brotherhood represents a family and I’m all about family. …
“That word ‘Brotherhood’ is just a very powerful word.”
Those at Duke could not have scripted it better.
“That’s when we knew we had something that was capturing the attention of the folks we had in mind,” Duke’s David Bradley said.
Bradley is Duke basketball’s creative director after first serving as the Blue Devils’ director of basketball operations. A Duke graduate, he has been a part of Duke branding and recruiting for several years, and in terms of college sports branding, little has gotten more mileage in the digital and social media age than “The Brotherhood.”
It all began simply enough in 2015 — with a tweet.
Jeff Capel then was an associate head coach on Mike Krzyzewski’s staff at Duke and a former Blue Devils guard. He had read a story on cleveland.com about Duke’s Quinn Cook attempting to make the roster of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, liked it, and wrote about it on Twitter (now X).
Capel tweeted: “So proud of this guy, @QCook323. Most definitely a fighter and a champion!”
Capel added three hashtags: #fight #dukeman #thebrotherhood.
And so it began.
Capel and Bradley began to talk about that last hashtag.
“He’s one of the coaches who’s interested in the bigger picture,” Bradley said of Capel, who left Duke in 2018 to become the head coach at Pittsburgh. “He and I had late-night chats and convos about social media and our brand.
“The Brotherhood was putting a name and an energy and more story-telling around something we thought already existed. If you were a program that had a lot of transfers, missed the (NCAA) tournament most years, had selfish guys on the court, it wouldn’t fit. We felt awesome about the state of our program, the players that were coming through, the brand of basketball we were playing. …”
There would be more conversations about “The Brotherhood” tag and about what’s next.
“We thought to embrace ‘The Brotherhood’ we could make it bigger than a tweet he had started with that late-night tweet about Quinn Cook,” Bradley said. “We talked about turning it into a logo and it kind of grew and grew and grew from there, probably more than that he or I envisioned. I think we’re both proud of how much it’s grown and how much it has resonated with recruits and of course our players and our fans.”
Duke athletics already had a distinctive logo — the Iron Duke “D” — first used in the 1970s. But Samuel Ho, an artist and illustrator based in Canada, created a different design that would be trademarked.
The “D” was incorporated, with a basketball and net in the middle. It was placed on a shield design with the laces of a basketball and topped with a touch of Duke architecture (picture the Cameron Indoor Stadium facade.)
Above it: “The Brotherhood.”
“Once it became popular, we had people making illegal merchandise and apparel,” Bradley said. “We had to step in and trademark it.”
And there was the video.
It took three years to complete the project, but 58 Duke players joined in to make “The Brotherhood” video that was released in March 2019 just before the NCAA Tournament.
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Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, Shane Battier, JJ Redick, Elton Brand, Zion … they all had a part in the who’s who of Duke basketball. There’s Jon Scheyer, now Duke’s head coach. And Jeff Capel.
“Our faces change. Our standards don’t change.”
“Our uniforms change but what those four letters represent, it never changes.”
“We will hunt banners, we will set the standard, we will make history.”
So it went. The video ended with Coach K saying, “We are The Brotherhood.”
It’s Krzyzewski who makes the branding of the “The Brotherhood” poignant, pertinent, said Johnny Moore, a Garner native who worked with Duke athletic marketing for decades and is a senior lecturer at the university.
“You had the same coach for 40 years. That’s why it works,” said Moore, executive director of the N.C. Sports Hall of Fame. “Because it doesn’t work when you change coaches. ‘The Brotherhood’ works because of the continuity of having the same coach for 40 years.”
Scheyer has continued that continuity and has enhanced the brand, recruiting some of the nation’s best such as Cooper Flagg and Kon Knueppel with the promise of being a part and carrying on the tradition of “The Brotherhood.”
“I think it helps a lot in recruiting,” Capel said via text. “Recruits know they are part of something very special.
“They know that no matter what their goals are, be it something in basketball, medicine, business, law, etc. … They have people that have worn that jersey before you and have walked that path. More importantly, they are willing and able to help you accomplish your dream, if you are willing to listen and do the work.”
The Blue Devils recently held a “Brotherhood Dinner” in Las Vegas during the NBA’s Summer League for former and current players. Among those attending: Jayson Tatum, Paolo Banchero, Cameron Boozer, Flagg and Knueppel.
Many of the same “alumni” gather for the K Academy, an adult fantasy camp for players 35 and older and a summer reunion for the former Duke players.
Duke has “The Brotherhood Run” as part of its nonconference schedules, bringing in teams coached by former Duke players such as Kenny Blakeney (Howard) and Greg Paulus (Niagara). This season, it will be Tommy Amaker and Harvard coming to Cameron.
“The opportunity to compete against someone who embodies ‘The Brotherhood’ is unbelievable for our players,” Scheyer said when the Harvard game was announced. “It’s part of the history and tradition that makes this program so special.”
A part of Duke’s social media presence in branding is “The Brotherhood Podcast,” allowing the players to display their personalities and describe their experiences at Duke.
“For it to be successful you have to have the players’ stories around something for it to be genuine and sincere,” Bradley said of Duke branding. “We’ve had that.”
Bradley chuckled when asked if Capel had ever joked that he should have tried to copyright “The Brotherhood” rather than making it a simple hashtag on Twitter. Capel has to wonder, too.
“I’m surprised by how it has taken off. But that is the power of social media,” Capel said. “It takes someone like Dave Bradley, that really understands social media and branding, to help make it into what it’s become.. It also helps when you have a generational recruit like Zion Williamson say when he announced his commitment that he was ‘joining The Brotherhood.’ That’s when it really took off.
“Most importantly, it takes the players to embrace it, to have pride in it, and to want to carry out what it means to wear and have worn that jersey. … They all have that bond and know what that means. And carry that honor and pride.”
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