Media Madness
College basketball fans are starting to create quite the buzz as festivities for March Madness begin. After a long season spent on the court, men’s college teams from across the nation compete to make it to the infamous Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four. Although this is a non-profit NCAA-sponsored event, March Madness still tends to be quite popular and ranks highly in the social world.
In a study by Social Media Manager David Neuman (2014), social media mentions were able to correctly pick the game match-ups 74% of the time in the 2014 tournament. This accuracy isn’t surprising with participation of over 60 million on social media and an audience of about 10.7 million per game. (Weiss, 2014). With all of this involvement, advertisers stepped in and were able to collectively earn roughly $1.5 billion from their March Madness advertising tactics (Garafola, 2014). This event has become popular among Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube users reaching a wide range of viewers. Many companies, including AT&T and Lowe’s, have followed the bandwagon as well.
AT&T did a great job at making the conventional, unconventional. During the 2014 March Madness event, AT&T sponsored courtside photography from the tournament and posted pictures onto Twitter (above). Blair Klein, the digital communications lead at AT&T, said that with this tactic they’re “connecting with customers and allowing them to engage with each other and the brand. This [Twitter-based] program reflects that, as well as the speed of conversation. It ties in with our ‘fastest 4G LTE network’ copy.” With March Madness being so popular, AT&T’s campaign was a major success by connecting the conventional task of photography to their phone company’s mission of high-speed viewing and interaction. They were very progressive with their use of “real-time marketing” (Heine, 2013).
Lowe’s, a home improvement store, seems to have little to do with college basketball, let alone any sport. With that said, they must be creative in their efforts to integrate their mission into the minds of viewers. In the past they held a competition on Facebook for office-workers, to see who had the most decorated cubicle. Participators were urged to share their creations on Facebook and Twitter to gain extra votes. By doing this they also promoted the Lowe’s company, so ultimately it was a win-win situation (Quick, 2012).
Lowe’s also made a memorable appearance on television with their “Need Help?” commercial last year (above). It illustrates a man attempting to mount bathroom tiles, and one by one they come crashing down since he lacked profession in DIY projects. To make this relatable for March Madness fans, Lowe’s added the names of each college onto the tiles, representing the idea of “crumbling brackets.” This idea was very clever and generated a lot of social media buzz for Lowe’s (Wasserman, 2014).
Although AT&T and Lowe’s don’t directly relate to basketball, their campaigns were successful by making simple connections with their target audience. The advertising and marketing for March Madness proves that viewing on multiple screens can be very beneficial.
