IMC Hawks Blog

Tag: March Madness

  • Banking on Bracketology

    Even if you’re not a fan of college basketball, you’ve likely heard friends and colleagues exclaim about their “busted brackets” as of late. The NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, billed as “March Madness” runs throughout the month of March and is one of the most popular spring sporting events. The tournament begins with 64 teams and ends with the championship game in April. Part of the fun of March Madness, is Bracketology, the science of pitting teams against each other to predict the outcome of the tournament. It gets pretty serious–billionaire Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway even offered $1 billion to whoever fills out the perfect bracket.

    Where does Bracketology intersect with IMC? The answer lies in the “good hands” of Allstate. 2014 is the insurance company’s third year as official sponsor of the NCAA tournament. This year, Allstate’s antagonistic character, Mayhem, is breaking brackets in a series of Tweets, Facebook updates, and Vines. While Mayhem is infamously known for causing car wrecks and burglaries, the Leo Burnett-created “March Mayhem” campaign makes light of Bracketology. Watch as Mayhem breaks, bends, and even blends busted brackets.

    March is Mayhem

    “March Mayhem” is Allstate’s social media component of its NCAA tournament campaign. During TV coverage of the tournament, the company sponsors the “Good Hands Play of the Game” and is rolling out increased advertising for its homeowners insurance. Pam Hollander, Allstate’s senior IMC director, points out that the campaign goes on as the tournament progresses, taking into account how different teams perform in the tournament. She says the campaign features direct engagement with fans. Mayhem acts as a direct engagement tool to connect and learn more about Allstate’s social media-savvy audience. With Mayhem, interpersonal communication takes place in an ad campaign, personifying the brand’s relationship with the consumer.

    Mayhem isn’t the only insurance character with social media presence. Representing insurance companies big and small: the Gecko, Flo, Jake, and J.J. Hightail each interact with their Twitter followers. One of the strong points of the March Mayhem campaign is how it takes advantage of the Bracketology phenomenon to establish a connection with the consumer. Using a popular social trend in a social media campaign exemplifies the personification of brands.

    Do you believe using Bracketology in advertising is effective? How have you seen other brands use social phenomena in their advertising?

    –Nathan Evers

  • March Madness = Advertising Mayhem: The competition is heating up!

    The brackets are in! For all you college basketball fans, March Madness has officially begun. According to USA Today, the NCAA basketball tournament brings in more TV advertising revenue than the NFL playoffs and even the Super Bowl, reaching a whopping 1 billion dollars in 2012. Columnist Bruce Horovitz says it will only get bigger. Despite your feelings about the teams and the games they are playing, this can only mean one thing for advertisers: the standards are skyrocketing. A 30-second spot during the college basketball championship game is running at about 1.4 million dollars. With a price like that, we can only expect some crazy, entertaining commercials.

    Just as many big-name brands come up with new advertising campaigns for the Super Bowl, they will have to step it up even more this March. The credit card company, Capital One, has already begun to roll out their campaign partnering with Charles Barkley and Alec Baldwin as the faces of their commercials. While the ads are pretty funny, I think Capital One could step it up a notch in the creativity department for the big game. Here is a clip of one of their new spots you may have already seen on the air:

    According to Forbes magazine, Capital One is also advancing their campaign by adding the hashtag #rallycry to the end frames of their advertisements to keep the conversation going, targeting those passionate bracket participants. I think this is a smart decision, from an advertising standpoint, as Capital One has really kept their target audience in mind.

    As for other brands to look out for when you’re watching college basketball this month are Buick, Acura, Dove Men+Care and ING, all of which will be advertising heavily during the NCAA tournament. To quote Dale Buss, columnist for BrandChannel.com, “Let the madness begin.”

    -Julia Tompkins

  • Goodbye Duke, Hello UNC

    On Monday’s blog post “ The Devil Wears Royal Blue” Allison Day, Jessica Berinson, Megan Canny, Melissa Gagliardi, Scott Burgess explained the brand of the Duke Blue Devils and how their success led them to dominate the basketball court and winning last years NCAA championship. However, last nights game (March 24) was rather surprising for the number one team.  The top seeded Blue Devils were defeated 93-77 by fifth-seeded Arizona.

    The Arizona Wild Cats head into the Elite Eight for the first time since 2005. They face the third seeded Connecticut Huskies on saturday night.

    Interestingly enough the state of North Carolina doesn’t have to give up quite yet. The UNC Tar-heels (Duke’s rivalry) are still in the running for championship. As I write this post, UNC #6 leads the end of the first half 40-15 against Marquette.

    The brands of both NC teams are hard to miss and so is their rivalry; get Duke and UNC fans in the same room, there will be a problem. Both teams have combined 9 national championships.

    The Brand of UNC

    Where does the nickname of “tar-heels” come from? North Carolina in the eighteenth century was a producer of tar and pitch. The nickname dates back to the American Civil War and American Revolution along with the mascot of a live Dorset ram.

    The colors of UNC, known as Carolina Blue and white, were designed in the late nineteenth century. Years before, the colors were chosen by the Dialectic (blue) and Philanthropic Societies (white), the oldest student organization in the university.

    Also, UNC has the ability to routinely bring on top high school players, and then send them off to the NBA. Some of the biggest players went to UNC, including the Michael Jordan, Vince Carter, Jerry Stackhouse, Antwan Jamison, and Rasheed Wallace (to name a few).

    -Micaela Fouhy, Lindsey Baggett, Drew Mayer, Will Cosden, Brianna Golden

  • March Madness: The True Underdog Story

    Every NCAA Tournament kick starts spring and there is truly nothing like the opening days of tournament basketball. People have put all their time and effort into studying brackets for their office or friendly pool. As the tournament starts we all question whether a 16 seed will finally upset a number 1 seed. Yet again, this year it did not happen. No matter what happens there are always upsets, and this tournament was no different. After the upsets occur the “Cinderella Story” comparisons start to fly around. Marketers and advertisers beg to ask who will wear the glass slipper this year.

    For some reason our country loves the underdog story. We love to see Rocky make a courageous comeback and win the fight in the last round after getting beat the entire time. The NCAA Tournament has its fair share of underdog stories this year with Virginia Commonwealth, Richmond, and Butler. Butler is the most ironic of the “Cinderella Stories” because they reached the NCAA Final last year and came narrowly close to beating National Champion Duke. So why do we love to see Butler as the underdog? Reporters continue to ask Butler Head Basketball Coach Brad Stevens about the Cinderella story and he simply responds with “the Cinderella story worked well for us last year so I love to hear it.” The problem is that we are much too quick to forget about Cinderella teams. Marketers and advertisers use these schools and teams to market their underdog story and then after the tournament we quickly forget about them. We don’t hear a word about the universities or their basketball teams until they become the underdog story then marketers pump money to inflate their story. The Butler Bulldogs were not talked about much this regular season yet they find themselves in the Sweet Sixteen again. No matter how successful they were last season Butler will continue to be branded as a Cinderella team because they are a small school that lacks a deep, rich basketball tradition. Teams like Kansas and North Carolina will never be mentioned as an underdog or a Cinderella no matter how much better the opposing team is. These branding techniques seem to always be used during March Madness.

    There is a special story for two of the three Cinderella teams previously named. If Richmond and VCU both win it will be the first time in NCAA Tournament history that two teams from the same city or town will have played each other. Let’s hope that both win so we can celebrate two great teams from Richmond making it to the Elite Eight. More importantly, we can cheer for our fellow Colonial Athletic Association partners the VCU Rams. I’m sure CBS and advertisers will hype up the battle of the underdogs and ask whether the glass slipper fits Richmond or VCU. At this point we might be getting ahead of ourselves, but we can all dream. Hey, it worked for Cinderella.

  • Basketball FREAK?!

    March Madness is a time of great success along with upsetting, shocking defeats.  The tournament lasts a month long that will determine the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball National Championship team.  So why did it take millions of viewers missing parts of games for decades before the networks realized we ALL want to watch ALL the games?  Well, 2011 is the year!! 

     One network, CBS, and three Turner cable channels, TBS, TNT and truTv will each individually broadcast different Division I Men’s Basketball matches from start to finish so that collectively they will show all the games. Not only are you able to watch one game, you are able to view the continuous scores of all the other games on the other networks from the top of your tv screen so you don’t miss a beat! Viewers now have the ability to flip between channels to the most exciting matches. This brings more coverage to the networks while broadening the audience of viewers.  Not everyone watches basketball, but during March Madness, many more do because of the upbeat competition of the tournament.  These four channels allow all the viewers to keep track of their bracket and join in on the fun!

    So far all channels collectively have done an excellent job of keeping fans up to date with coverage and news on the tournament before and after each game. A team of commentators led by Greg Gumbel have kept the conversation going for every match up. The partnership that CBS and Turner has created where the feel and look of each station’s broadcast, including the same graphics and commentators, has convincingly made viewers feel like they are watching the same tournament. As opposed to the tournament being broken down among four different stations with their individual interpretation of how it should look. This ideal broadcast is what March Madness fans have been craving for years.

    CBS has owned the rights to March Madness since 1982 and since all that time CBS controlled what games were shown. So in a bold move for making the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament available for all basketball freaks and bracket-fillers, CBS signed a 14 year deal with Time Warner’s Turner cable company for $10.8 billion to own the rights to the tournament. In doing so CBS and Turner have become each a customer-centric organization. They saw what the fans wanted and delivered. “It’s a better programming option for the viewer at home and the basketball fan,” said CBS Sports Chairman Sean McManus. “More work on his or her part to find the game, but they get to decide what game they want to watch. In the past, I think we did a very good job of moving around, but it was our [CBS] decision.” Since CBS and Turner have become customer focused they see the importance for the NCAA tournament to be controlled by the viewers, and to allow the Madness of March to be experienced by the fans. 

    The next set of tournament games are this Thursday and Friday, March 24th and 25th, which showcase the remaining Sweet Sixteen. Check www.ncaa.com for a live bracket of the remaining teams and teams whose road to victory has ended.

    -Lauren DeHart & JC Salter

  • March Madness Scoring Big with Advertisers and Viewers

    The pressure is always on during March Madness and not just for the teams.  This year marks the start of a new strategy that is scoring big with advertisers and basketball viewers across the nation.  Last April, a 14-year $10.8 billion deal partnered CBS with Turner broadcast System.  This new deal means the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship games will be divided between CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV making all games available without an extended cable package.

    This change in game airing has not only allowed CBS to take corrective action to fix fans’ complaints about not being able to pick the games they want to watch but also allows advertisers to maximize their reach and get more for their money.  With a +15% rating growth and an average of 8.4 million viewers for the first week alone, records were set with the highest first week viewer average in 17 years and +18% growth in viewers for Sunday’s third-round coverage.  This +18% growth on Sunday meant an additional 1.6 million viewers in comparison to 2010.

    Specifically, the areas of largest growth have been males ages 18-34 with a +40% viewer growth.  This is big news for advertisers focusing on this public.  With bigger audiences comes a bigger advertising vehicle. With this type of seemingly exponential increase, the five R’s of receptivity, relevance, response, recognition, and relationship come to mind. Since males were targeted as the areas of the largest growth, companies can now utilize TNT, truTV, TBS, and even CBS and relevance to gear their advertising efforts towards males between the ages of 18-34.

    Someone taking full advantage of this opportunity is Buick. The famous automaker is trying to rebuild its brand image and appeal to younger buyers. What better time to do so than during the NCAA tournament amongst males between the ages of 18-34? Buick utilizes the idea of recognition by recognizing their audience as avid college basketball fans and bringing in a key player from last year’s runner up, the Butler Bulldogs, to help endorse their new brand image. Avery Jukes will appear in one of several TV spots of telling stories of overcoming the odds and hammering through tough obstacles. This is a true appeal to the emotion of the viewers because fans of college basketball appreciate a good Cinderella story, as the Butler Bulldogs were categorized during the NCAA tournament of 2010.

    Avery Jukes, who played basketball in last year’s championship game for Butler University, is the founder of Jukes Foundation for Kids, a non-profit entity dedicated to providing food, clothing and educational resources to youth in the United States and Uganda. (GM)

    It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how advertisers employ the Five R’s throughout the tournament. Will they use the emotional appeals of a good comeback story? Or will they gear themselves towards a more winning attitude of champions never lose? We’ll just have to see what the Madness of March brings…

    -Carissa Niederkorn, Deji Adeleke, Tiffany Evans, Katie Eagle & Anna Kate Babnik

  • The Devil Wears Royal Blue

    The Duke Blue Devils came home wearing championship rings at last year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Led by Coach Krzyzewski, also known as “Coach K”, the team dominated the court with the power of players Jon Scheyer and Kyle Singler.  Duke’s basketball program is ranked number four of all time with its amount of wins, has won four NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournaments (second of any ACC team), and has been in 15 Final Fours. This past year, Duke has been branded as the number one and championship team, but what will their brand be now?

    So far, Duke has been undefeated in the 2011 NCAA tournament, reaching the sweet sixteen round and keeping its successful brand image. Coach K has been helping this brand and even creating his own after earning his 900th win yesterday, March 20.  Duke has a positive and strong image supported by Coach K’s reputation for fair play, clean programs, and outstanding leadership, not to mention his top-notch recruits.  Coach K has been the head coach at Duke for 31 seasons.

    Duke’s brand transcends off the court with their wild assortment of fans, also branded as the Cameron Crazies.  These students and other spectators dress from head to toe in royal blue and white, even painting their bodies, to show their support and devotion for their favorite team.  The amount of school spirit Duke brings to their University fosters social capital among students and the Duke fan community.

    These fans have supported Duke all the way to the Sweet 16 round, who is scheduled to play Arizona this Thursday, March 24. Also making it to this round is their hometown rival, the UNC Tar Heels.  This age-old rivalry has strengthened the brand loyalty of both Duke and UNC. This game attracts millions of viewers each time the two schools compete and is one of the most entertaining and thrilling games of the season to watch. They have not yet faced each other in this year’s NCAA tournament, but in order to reach the Championship game they will have to.  Will Duke and Coach K maintain their champion status or will they be “Tar-heeled”? What do you think?

    Allison Day, Jessica Berinson, Megan Canny, Melissa Gagliardi, Scott Burgess