The madness has begun, and it could not have happened at a better time! While on Spring Break this year, students can watch the postseason conference basketball games on their free time. Instead of watching them while in class, studying, or doing homework. March Madness has become a phenomenon that attracts many people to college basketball. However, there are still some who have no idea about the phenomenon and after reading this blog they will have some insight on it.

First let’s begin by covering what March Madness is exactly. March Madness is a Division 1 men’s college basketball tournament where 68 schools are selected to play in the single elimination tournament. There are seven rounds and at the end one team is crowned the National Champion. Although March Madness technically refers to the NCAA tournament many people refer to the postseason conference tournaments as the beginning of March Madness, since they occur in March and are a pivotal time for schools hoping to receive an invitation into the NCAA tournament.

You may wonder where did the term March Madness come from? According to the NCAA the term was first used to refer to basketball in 1939, by Henry V. Porter, an Illinois high school referee. The year 1939, is also coincidentally the year of the first NCAA tournament, but the term was not used for the tournament until 1982. During coverage of the 1982 tournament CBS broadcaster Brent Musburger used the term and the term has stuck with the tournament ever since.

Source: Brent Musburger

Some readers may remember a couple of years ago when UNCW was in the tournament. But did you ever know why? There are 32 Division 1 conferences and one school from each conference wins an automatic invitation once they win their postseason conference tournament. A couple of years ago UNCW won the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) postseason conference tournament. For those who do not win their postseason tournament they can still earn an invitation from the selection committee. The selection committee decides based off the level of competition the school plays and notable wins and losses they have.

Source: UNCW CAA

The key part of the tournament is the bracket. Once the teams are selected, they are then placed in a bracket. Schools in smaller conferences are normally placed at lower seeds due to the level of competition they play throughout the regular season. Teams who were projected to be placed number 1 in the bracket could lose their spot if they lose in the postseason tournament. Recently, Gonzaga lost to Saint Mary’s in the West Coast Conference (WCC) tournament so it will be interesting to see where Gonzaga will be placed. According to USA Today Gonzaga’s lost could change the seeding for not only themselves but other schools as well. The seeding will be announced on March 17, 2019.

Source: 2019 Bracket

Now that you know about the postseason tournaments, seeding, and bracket you are now ready for March Madness!

It’s that time again! Where some might think of March and think spring time or St. Patrick’s Day, sports fans think March Madness. Marketers and sponsors, however, think “big bucks”.  During the 2017 season, each game received a total of an estimated 5.6 million viewers! According to Statista, March Madness is the most expensive basketball event for television advertisers. In 2017, television advertisers spent about $1,285m on March Madness, falling just less than $300m behind the average amount spent on the NFL’s Superbowl at $1,547m! This is a big chunk of cash, but March Madness advertisers and sponsors know exactly what they are doing, especially when regarding an increase in brand power through social media engagement.

NCAA’s Corporate Sponsors in 2018

Some of March Madness’s biggest corporate sponsors include Capital One (listed by NCAA as one of their corporate champions), Unilever, and Reece’s, all of which received a huge increase in social media engagement during the basketball event during the 2018 season. Social media engagement, in this case, includes likes, shares, mentions, comments, and follows across both Facebook and Twitter platforms. Sponsoring a large-scale sporting event = GENIUS MOVE!

Source: Forbes 

NCAA’s Top Restaurant Sponsors in 2018

Hats off to Wendy’s for leading their category with a whopping 30,749 social media engagements from March 11th-March 19th! The social affinity index “measures how much more likely people who are already engaging with the NCAA tournament on social media will mention a certain brand”. Wendy’s social affinity index more than doubled all others in the restaurant category! According to Forbes, users were 450 times more likely to mention Wendy’s than the average social media user in the month of March. Oh, the power basketball holds! Here is a peak at how March Madness’s top restaurant sponsors benefitted from their screen time in 2018:

Source: Forbes

Who knows what’s to come during this 2019 March Madness season?! What we do know is that NCAA sponsors are buckling up and getting ready to see an increase in brand power. The best part about being a normal sport’s consumer like you and me? THE GAME!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for many college basketball fans, as March Madness approaches. In the next few days or weeks, you might see a something called a bracket printed out or being posted on social media. Over 60 million Americans fill out a bracket each year in hopes of predicting all 63 games and receiving $1 million every year for life.

So, what’s the big deal with these brackets, anyways? Let’s take a look at how they started and eventually became a phenomenon.

The very first bracket in a sports tournament came in 1851, at a chess tournament in London. London was hosting the Great Exhibition for British technology, and English chess master Howard Staunton set out to organize the world’s first international chess tournament. There was a field of 16 players, and Staunton needed to narrow the field down to one winner. So, he decided to make eight pairs, with the losers of each being eliminated from contention. Instead of seeding players to decide pairings (like the modern NCAA tournament), Staunton had each draw a random lot. Pictured below is what Staunton’s bracket looked like.

Source: NCAA.com

On the other hand, the first official NCAA bracket pool is thought to have started in a Staten Island bar. 88 people filled out brackets in the pool and paid $10 in a winner-take-all format. In 2006, in the same bar, 150,000 entered, and prize money went beyond $1.5 million. However, 1985 was the year that brackets really took off. The NCAA tournament suddenly expanded to 64 teams, the highest it had ever been. This gave underdog teams more of an opportunity, creating lots of excitement, upsets, and ultimately fueling the popularity of the brackets.

In the past 20 years, the NCAA has created an entire industry, from analysis websites to online courses designed to help people fill out the perfect bracket. Brackets have especially helped with marketing March Madness, and the term ‘bracket’ is basically synonymous with March Madness. Social media is filled with pictures of completed brackets, and dozens of commercials and ads are made reminding us to fill them out. Even Disney fans have put their own spin on them (pictured below.)

Source: Insider

For as long as I can remember, I have completed a bracket. Growing up as a huge sports fan, even if I didn’t know each team competing in the tournament, it was fun to see how many games I could predict correctly. It also made me pay attention to the tournament more than usual if my favorite team wasn’t competing. Since the NCAA tournament first started, there has not been one person who has guessed each game correctly. Maybe that will change in the future, but for now, if you plan on filling out a bracket for March Madness this year, happy bracket-ing!

-Hannah Lewis

Click here for a printable PDF of the 2019 March Madness bracket

Spring break is right around the corner which means a week with no classes and an ample amount of free time.  Per usual, this semester has been busy for many students and several have fallen behind on a very important thing: television shows.  Many television shows are returning from their mid-season winter break and will start this month.  You might be wondering, “how does television relate to IMC?”  There are a variety of different ways, but the one that I will discuss today is product placement.  According to dictionary.com, “product placement is defined as a practice in which manufacturers of goods or providers of a service gain exposure for their products by paying for them to be featured in movies and television programs.”  Have you ever wondered why your favorite actors drink their Diet Coke with the label facing the camera every time?  Well, there is a method to this madness.  Brands and companies often pay to be subtly placed into shows or movies to reach their desired target audience based off the demographics of the television show.

Source: NBC

NBC’s popular show Superstore returned last night and is full of “random” product placement.  Superstore, a comedy that is similar to The Office, is set in “Cloud 9” (analogous to a Walmart). Season one featured random products around the store that were fictional brands.  However, as the show increased in popularity, real/ big-name brands started to pay for product placement.  Brands today want to be represented in a positive way, and one possible reason as to why there was little to no product placement in the earlier seasons is because the show did not have much credibility.  Big companies do not want to advertise their products on a show that has little potential or will likely get cancelled, which is why it took time for reputable products to appear.  Today, you can see products like La Croix and Roku featured (not so) subtly on the show.

Source: NBC

However, due to the emergence of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, the current trend of waiting out to see how a show preforms the initial seasons is becoming increasingly difficult.  For example, in the Netflix original hit series, 13 Reasons Why, Beats headphones took a bit of a risk.  Beats most likely took elements such as analyzing the actors potential popularity, producer reputation, and overall storyline into consideration, however investing in product placement without seeing any ratings was undoubtedly a bold move.

Source: Netflix

At times, product placement can feel very forced if noticed, but as IMC students, it is important to recognize.  Analyzing 13 Reasons Why is interesting because the entire show has a relatively dark tone, yet even in the most serious moments, the bright red Beats logo is prominently centered.

Even though product placement may seem overdone at times, it is undoubtedly an effective way to advertise and a huge amount of money is invested in its practices.

-Alex Patton