What is March Madness and why should you care?
March Madness is when the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament takes place. It is a several week long event that is very popular in the United States. Throughout this tournament, if brands are able to tap into loyal fans' feelings it can create a full range of benefits. These benefits include:
- Increased participation in promotion and sales
- Deeper brand loyalty with current customers
- Smaller, but still significant long-term increase of followers
- Dramatic short-term increase of visitors
The overarching goal of any March Madness activity is to try and tie consumers' enthusiasm about college basketball finals to your brand. Below I will list some of the objectives of the emotional appeals a brand would want to touch on. This will demonstrate the importance of connecting a brand with March Madness.
- Fans are consumers that feel strongly about a certain event, object, or person. In this case fans are feeling strongly about basketball, and more specifically March Madness.
- A company should position themselves to appear deeply connected with March Madness. This will get loyal basketball fans to eagerly share brands' March Madness themed content, which will result in short-term gains.
- The positive associations between March Madness and a brand will still subconciously exist, even after the event ends. Any future thoughts of March Madness may have the chance of triggering a consumer's memory about a brand, as well as feelings of happiness.
So how should a brand associate themselves with March Madness?
- Sports Pools
- Brands can use an NCAA sports pool to draw attention to itself. For example, brands can have consumers fill out a bracket for their pool, and the winner of the pool could win a prize! Another way to go about it would be to create a NCAA pool to raise money for a cause. Then participants can bet on their teams, and donate to a good cause.
- Contests
- Vote Contests: A brand simply creates a poll asking which team that their consumers want to win. This allows consumers to have an outlet to show their enthusiasm. Competitive results in the pool could even encourage followers to share the post to gain the most votes for their team.
- Photos
- Creative Photos: A creative photo post is a great way to get people talking about your brand. A creative photo can help followers make the association between a brand and March Madness. Also this is a very inexpensive form of advertisement.
- Cover Photos: A brand changing their cover photo can show their dedication to March Madness, and demonstrate the fact that they are up-to-date on current events. The cover photo can also help emphasize any March Madness related promotions. A brand can also make a more subtle change to their cover photo just by tying in their brand with basketball in some way.
- Tying a brand to a local team
- Brands can also show their involvement with the tournament by supporting local teams. By creating sharable content, followers will want to show their love for their team and their brand. Nike did a great job with this, and actually created a photograph (like the one shown below) for all of the teams in the tournament.
March Madness begins March 14th and ends on April 3rd. Leading up to the tournament, during, and a bit after, companies can be creative with promotional campaigns to associate their brand with March Madness. The key is making the content rewarding and easy for viewers to share!
Sources
http://corp.wishpond.com/thank-you-march-madness/wp-content/uploads/Ebook_MARCH.pdf
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d7/e9/2d/d7e92d124865ac1dc28e13a8c9301f2c.jpg
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/enhanced/webdr01/2013/3/19/10/enhanced-buzz-31996-1363702264-8.jpg
https://g.foolcdn.com/editorial/images/161822/buffalo-wild-wings-march-madness_large.png
Great read! I also did my blog about how brands are incorporating March Madness.
ReplyDeleteI have never really been that into basketball, but it is very interesting to me how brands tap into huge events like March Madness to build relationships with consumers. Very nice analysis!
ReplyDeleteI loved your post! Totally agree that March Madness is a perfect opportunity for brands to engage and influence consumers both online and offline. Due to the popularity of March Madness, there is a peak of active users online, and brands can take advantage to try to build relationships with their consumers. I believe for many brands, it is important to stay relevant with the culture and the trends of the users online. Therefore, I too think it would be successful for brands to care about the most popular topics in the moment, in particular March Madness.
ReplyDeleteWow, that Wendy's ad is eye-catching. I love the creativity. It immediately drew me in, and now I am thinking about Wendy's fries. I would say it's effective and gets the point across without saying “BUY ME”. Great Read!
ReplyDeleteEveryone seems to love March Madness, whether you watch regular season games or not. I totally agree that this is a prime time for companies to step their marketing game up. My favorite idea of yours is the company encouraging customers to fill out a bracket and then the winner winning some kind of prize or deal!
ReplyDeleteI loved reading this article. As a big fan of March Madness myself, I think a lot of people tend to get wrapped up in it. But if you actually step back, it is interesting to think about how much work goes into it all, and how it applies to marketing. I think you did a great job explaining that. Awesome article!
ReplyDeleteMarch Madness, as well as other sporting events, is a good way to create engagement with a brand. The brand does need to be wary of who they support because some die hard fans may be put-off by the fact their brand is supporting their rival team. It also is starting to have super bowl-like advertisements which are fun to watch.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great blog topic! Especially because I do not have a clue about anything to do with March Madness! Thanks for the information!
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