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Marketing Madness

As the Final Four makes its way to Dallas this weekend, how is your bracket doing?

If yours is like mine, then probably not too good. For being a non-profit, the NCAA has done a masterful job of promoting March Madness to both fans and corporations. 

 

Today, the competition has grown to include 68 teams, ending in a final contest between the two. This year the contest will include 67 games that can be watched live, streamed online, or viewed later.

 

March Madness is now the second most popular sports showcase for advertisers, trailing behind the NFL playoffs, but ahead of the NBA and MLB postseasons. According to Kantar Media, the NCAA was able to turn this popularity into a TV rights agreement worth $10.8 billion over 14 years. Last year, March Madness generated $1.15 billion in ad revenue. 

The NCAA has helped itself by creating brand identities for the entire tournament by giving each stage of the contest names such as March Madness, Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, and Final Four. It's hard for even non-fans to not know what these names are referring to.

 

Social media and word-of-mouth are a huge factor when it comes to March Madness. People attend branded parties, buy advertised products, and participate in office "bracket pools." This gets advertisers excited by the prospect of reaching a much larger, highly-engaged audience of fans and non-fans alike - enabling them to leverage their marketing investment.

  

Everyone involved with the tournament increasingly communicates via popular social media sites. For example: 

• Facebook:
   March Madness has a Facebook fan page with over 475,000 fans and "like" links to such other sites as NCAA (126,000 fans), iHoops (511,045 fans), CBS Sports (565,000 fans), and many other sports links. Each of these, in turn has their own like links leading to additional Facebook word-of-mouth pyramids.
• Twitter: The tournament is a major trend on Twitter with its own pyramid of followers (over 144,000  as of this writing).
• YouTube: Before the tournament even started, search results for March Madness yielded 397,000 results! People can watch videos of games they missed or make their own commentary videos that help to further promote the brand.

By examining the marketing techniques used by the NCAA, marketers can perhaps learn how to better do the following:

1. Create names, slogans and logos that are easy to remember. If they are, people will broadcast them for you and further your brand reach, frequency, and engagement.
2. Apply branding and promotion techniques employed by March Madness.
3. Create contests and games as an effective way to teach prospects and customers the benefits of your products while they have fun competing for prizes.
4. Generate newsworthy events that capture the imagination of the news media so they will promote them for you at no charge. Nike is perhaps one of the best examples of using the news media as part of their marketing strategies.
5. Provide traditional and social media with the information they need to publicize your products and events for free.
6. Tie-in with events such as March Madness to leverage your brand and promotion.

Even though the NCAA is a non-profit organization that many would not associate with brilliant marketing, they have done a commendable job of taking the March Madness Tournament and turning into one of the most popular sports showcases for advertisers.

The Six Million Dollar Woman

Far from hearing crickets after streaming into the Internet abyss, former TV news talent are unearthing a flourishing market online.

In mid-March, former CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric kicked off her position as global news anchor for Yahoo by interviewing former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Online news outlets know that longevity and shareability beat breaking news. That can include stretching a viral video into an entire segment.

"It's not just who watches that night - it's 'have you created a show or a good segment that people are going to watch over time?'" said Jon Housman, CEO of Ora.TV (new home of Larry King).

An added benefit: It is ridiculously cheap to produce, as Forrester Research VP James McQuivey pointed out.

While TV news operations sweat cash sending reporters to Afghanistan, Web news sites can do video chats with interviewees for a fraction of the cost.

Their success online doesn't mean that if given the chance, online news anchors wouldn't come back to television.

The disparity in the online versus TV audience is staggering. 

Before he left Fox News, Glenn Beck got 1.76 million viewers in Q2 of 2011. He traded that for 312,500 average monthly unique video views on TheBlaze.com, according to comScore.

The jury is still out on whether Couric's Yahoo venture will justify her reported $6 million paycheck.

Despite the promising audience numbers, online ad dollars still lag broadcast, notes Ken Doctor, Outsell media analyst, who pointed out that top video brands online pull in $50 to $80 per 1,000 views.

Doctor said video ads fetch three to four times what text ads can garner. Once someone figures out how to quantify how much attention people are paying online, he believes that these ads will be sold at a premium.

"Video advertising is the kind of digital advertising that is holding up in the market," Doctor said. "Video advertising is one area that has more demand than supply."  

Taco Bell to "Live Mas" in Instagram!

Taco Bell's "Wake Up Live Mas" campaign

utlizes a common marketing mix:         TV, radio ads, in-store point-of-purchase and earned social media. But it's adding a new sprinkle to the mix: Instagram. The California-based company has purchased its first run of Instagram ads, underscoring how the industry is gravitating toward the photo-sharing social platform.

Earlier this month, Adweek reported that Omnicom was investing close to $40 million in Instagram ad inventory, while the Facebook-owned entity recently exceeded 200 million monthly users. Things are looking up for Instagram, and Taco Bell CMO Chris Brandt isn't about to miss the proverbial boat as his brand targets millennials with waffle tacos and the rest of its new breakfast menu.

"It's another first for us," Brandt told Adweek. "We were the first [fast food chain] on Snapchat, and we were early on Vine."

Taco Bell is utilizing Vine and plans to incorporate Snapchat messaging for the breakfast effort, highlighting how the taco slinger sees emerging platforms as more than passing fads. The quick-serve player is running Pandora ads as well, while leveraging its branded station on the digital music streaming service. Additionally, Taco Bell president Brian Niccol held a Reddit question-and-answer session this afternoon to chat with consumers about the breakfast menu.

"Our target is millennials," Brandt said. "You have to talk to them where they are. Certainly, our TV spots are very important - but we like to call it 'the power of the and.' So it's not just television anymore given where consumers are engaging, in social and mobile. Therefore, those things are a big part of our campaign."

Of course, an effort with a tagline such as #WakeUpLiveMas also involves paid and organic marketing on Twitter and Facebook.

"We try to have the right creative on the right platform," he explained. "Nothing is worse than [social media marketing] that's out of context. It's jarring to the consumer rather than engaging."

Are QR codes making a comeback? 

Agencies deemed QR codes dead 2 years ago. The problem? They require users to download an app. The other problem? Many of the apps. don't work well and require a steady hand and much patience to scan the code and open up the link.They also don't work well in areas where there is no cell phone service. Then, why is Clear Channel Outdoor planning to put these scannable tags on signage across the country?

Clear Channel, which has almost 700,000 billboards and signs around the world, plans to put 75,000 scannable tags on ads at sites that feature "heavy footfall and long dwell-time" - namely airports, shopping malls, bus stops, and the like.

In addition to QR (Quick Response) Codes, some of the billboards will have SMS capabilities to text passersby or use near-field communication, which transmits information to nearby devices.

Clear Channel says the initiative - dubbed Connect - was informed by consumers tuning in to ads on social media and other content platforms. "Connect presents the opportunity to target consumers on-the-go, when they are receptive to messages and can be delighted by timely, relevant and tailored invitations to engage," Suzanne Grimes, chief operating officer of Clear Channel Outdoor, said in a statement.

The QR Codes do lend themselves to one thing every marketer loves: data. Clear Channel will be able to tell clients how many people scanned their ad, as well as when and if they took the next step of buying something via their phone or mobile device.

The results could be underwhelming if prior QR forays are an accurate indicator. 

Digiday, a New York trade publisher covering digital marketing, said in December that QR Codes' days are over, and even likened them to "robot vomit."

Clear Channel could prove the haters wrong and produce compelling enough content to make the venture work. Ironically, the old-fashioned, low-tech roadside billboard business is doing pretty well. Drivers still have to keep their eyes on (or near) the road-at least for now. And because of tighter regulations, demand is pretty high.

A new "satellite" office?

While the FCC is evaluating Comcast's $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable, Dish TV Chairman Charlie Ergen recently contacted DirecTV CEO Mike White to discuss a merger of the two satellite television giants. 

DirecTV is the largest U.S. satellite-television operator, with about 20 million paying subscribers. Dish is No. 2 with about 14 million subscribers, and also has a spectrum portfolio that may be valued at almost $26 billion, according to Bloomberg Industries. Dish has said it remains open to all options to monetize the U.S. airwaves, including building its own network or teaming up with an existing carrier, such as Verizon Communications or AT&T.

A deal may be more likely to pass after the current administration departs, one person said. The key to a deal being approved is how regulators view the market, another person said. If video competition is extended to online services, such as Netflix, a deal could pass, the person said.

"We aren't suprised that the two CEOs would discuss a deal," James Ratcliffe, an analyst at Buckingham Research Group, wrote in a note after the report. "Ergen has made it clear in the past that he believes a combination with DTV would create significant value, so the fact that he approached DTV CEO Mike White wouldn't surprise us." Still, Ratcliffe wrote, "we remain skeptical" because of prospects for a "difficult regulatory approval process."

"There is obviously a business case that makes a lot of sense for consolidation in the satellite industry," Ergen said in November, before the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal was announced. "You're going to see consolidation, maybe first in the cable industry," he said.

Although White is hesitant to pursue a deal, he hasn't ruled it out entirely, one person said. The talks are being conducted at a senior level with no official process yet under way, several people said. White has been openly more wary about a possible combination.

"While I certainly believe our industry has changed substantially and I believe there are a lot of reasons why consolidation in our industry would be pro-consumer to try and improve the balance between programmers and distributors, you still have to go sell that in Washington," White said in December.