IMC Hawks Blog

Category: Fandom

  • The Hunger Games are…Real?

    The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, opened on November 22, 2013 as a sequel to the Hunger Games. What started as a series of books by Suzanne Collins has been turned into a hit soon-to-be trilogy. Catching Fire made an estimated $158,074,286.00 on its opening night in the United States alone, according to IMDB. The blockbuster film partnered with many companies, including Subway and Feeding America. This trio has combined forces to also include Twitter in an effort to end hunger.

    As a result of Subway and Catching Fire being partners, Subway is currently using the tributes of the Games to encourage people to eat in the restaurant. This type of celebrity endorsement brings in people who might not normally eat there. “Oh, if Peeta eats Subway, I should too!” Granted, this behavior might come more from children but they, in turn, will ask their parents to take them to Subway. I’ve seen this time and time again with my younger siblings. This also works for the older crowd, however, because a partnership of this nature often includes promotional items or sales/deals that someone may anticipate being offered. Subway has transformed their marketing strategies and dining areas, with concepts like “Where Victors Eat” and “Win your own Victory Tour,” with the latter being a sweepstakes in conjunction with their collectible Catching Fire drink cups.r_kat1

    In the third and final facet of this trio of partners, Feeding America has jumped in and put their cause directly in the middle. Subway has placed cardboard cutouts of tributes Katniss, Peeta, and Finnick in the dining areas of Subways. A patron, after eating “What Victors Eat,” can take a photo with the cutouts and post it to the Subway Twitter, with the hashtag of #SUBtractHunger. Each time a hashtag is used, it is counted towards the 1,000,000 meals that Subway will buy for Feeding America. In the fine print, it says that Subway will donate up to $125,000, as each dollar makes about nine meals. However, this linkage will only exist until 11:59pm on December 15, 2013. The meals will be provided from Feeding America through local food banks in areas in need.

    This celebrity endorsement effectively ties in cause marketing in order to create an environment in which Subway patrons are encouraged to aid Feeding America. Though there is no mention of patrons being able to donate money directly to Feeding America via Subway and Catching Fire, the Feeding America website has a donation area, as well as a hyperlink to a Hunger Games site, where a large “Ignite the Fight Against Hunger” plea is proudly displayed under a Mockingjay and above a photo of the tributes stoically ready to win the real-world Hunger Games. The number of families that go hungry over the holidays is continuously growing. With Feeding America, Subway, and the Hunger Games movie series teaming up to feed families, alongside many other organizations attempting to end hunger, do you think the odds are in are their favor?

    -Hilary Hall

  • “Together We Make Football” and Community

    When I think about the NFL, or football in general, my mind immediately goes to large men with helmets running into each other; granted, I am not a big sports fan.  Most people’s minds wouldn’t imagine a little girl as the face of a major NFL ad campaign.  However, tiny Samantha Gordon, a ten-year-old pee-wee football player from Utah, is featured on the first commercial of the NFL’s “Together We Make Football” campaign.

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    “Together We Make Football” is a contest where football fans of all ages, shapes and sizes are encouraged to share their stories of how football impacts their lives and what it means to them.  The contest narrows down to ten finalists, with five invited to take part in Super Bowl XLVIII festivities.  These stories can be in video, picture or story form and are posted to the “Together We Make Football” website.  The winners are chosen by a panel of judges, and the site’s visitors are invited to “like” the different posts; although these likes don’t have any affect on the contest winners.

    So how can I, someone so inexperienced in all things NFL, take an interest in “Together We Make Football?”  By applying it to what I know.  This campaign is a perfect example of how subcultures form and become such tight-knit communities.  The Social Identity Theory of communication states that people have many different versions of themselves depending on the groups, or subcultures, they belong to.  Different social situations are what drive these separate “selves” to behave in certain ways.  The title alone explains why “Together We Make Football” exemplifies this theory.  Defining fans of football as a “we” takes thousands of people and brings them together into a single unit.

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    Social Identity Theory goes further, saying that people belonging to one group tend to favor others within the group at the expense of others on the outside.  This holds true in the NFL regarding team rivalries in which fans become passionately involved.  Rivalries are like a double-edged sword, bringing together fans of the same team while creating tension with the fans of the opposing team.

    “Together We Make Football” reminds us that all fans are the same.  Ultimately, the goal is for their favorite team to win.  The campaign reminds us that all fans have the same goal, though it might be for different teams.  It allows people to share why they love the game so much, which can bridge the gap between rivals.  The different fan groups can become a single football-loving “we” because of the “Together We Make Football” campaign.

    – Maggie Dowicyan