March is a month full of brackets, business, and more brackets. The NCAA basketball tournament generates a lot of commotion in the workplace. In offices across America, it is not uncommon to see coworkers generating friendly competition by hosting bracket challenges.
We can learn a lot about marketing from the impact of the tournament on consumers. The ESPN Tournament Challenge has drawn consumers to submit about 14 million brackets. This is a new record breaking last year’s 13 million. By creating a nationwide competition, the NCAA has gained viewers who may not watch the tournament otherwise. This increase of brackets shows how strategically creating a competition can attract more business.
Every year, March Madness attracts consumers to various bars and restaurants. To cater to this wave of customers, companies create many new promotional opportunities. Providing customers with televisions, game schedules, and $0.65 boneless wings on Thursdays, Buffalo Wild Wings has gained the title “Official Hangout” by the NCAA. Buffalo Wild Wings proudly wears this title, in hopes to reel in fans. To cater to those watching from home, Pizza Hut offers $7.99 two topping pizzas. Pizza Hut has used an extremely limited, custom pizza-ordering shoe called, “Pie Tops” to promote their March deals. This shoe has a button on the tongue to order a pizza, and has been given only to specific influential celebrities, such as Duke University Alumni, Grant Hill.
Other companies, who cannot offer deals on food, focus on consumer interaction. Snapchat, for example, will publish more than 30 “Our Stories” to engage those at and around the event. “Our Stories” are a way for app-users to interact at a much larger scale, making their opinions public nationwide. This feature is infamous for “Trash Talk Stories,” where students from competing schools can quarrel back and forth.
From friendly competitions with co-workers to public trash talking, the impact of different marketing strategies is apparent throughout March Madness.
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