Companies Embrace the (March) Madness

by megan ~ March 19, 2009

It’s that time of year again….

March is always an exciting month for college basketball fans with the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, aka “March Madness,” and this year basketball fans have a wider than ever range of options for following their teams’ quest for greatness. 

Those far from a TV (or at work) will be able to check their stats and bracket picks online, in social networks, and via mobile devices - and they’ll do so in branded environments.  Brands know visitors to those sites are already growing before the March 19 tipoff and will only increase until the final championship match on April 6 in Detroit and they’re hurrying to garner some of that attention by sponsoring those sites.

KFC is playing a return engagement as the sponsor of the “Tournament Pick’ Em” game on the Yahoo Sports Web site.  As in last year’s promotion, fans can create brackets for their picks in each NCAA round and register to win a $1,000,000 prize from yahoo for correctly picking all 63 matches, or a $10,000 award for coming closest to a perfect pick.  In addition, they can print out those bracket choices and take the result to a participating KFC for discounts on hot wings and other menu items.

Additionally, Papa John’s, which is the “Official Pizza of March Madness,” has rolled out a contest on the social-networking site Facebook.  Beginning March 16 and running through March 24, anyone 18 years or older who becomes a “fan” of Papa John’s on Facebook will be registered to win two tickets to this year’s NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball games, which will be held in Detroit, April 4-6.

Meanwhile, other social network MySpace is teaming up with Coca-Cola’s Vitaminwater energy brand to offer the MySpace Bracket Challenge.  Registered players will compete to predict the outcome of each tournament round and to earn standing based on the correctness of their picks.  At the end of the tournament final, the players with the most accurate bracket picks will be declared the winner and awarded a grand prize of $10,000.

Vitaminwater will also sponsor some of the additional content at the site, including observations and sample picks from recognized players such as basketball starts Chris Paul, Ray Allen and David Lee.

So between the Cinderella stories, thrilling shots at the buzzer, and nail-biting upsets, this year fans will be unable to escape noticing which companies are (not so) secretly behind the action.

Megan Raphael is an account executive at Mediashop Public Relations.  She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Public Relations and International Studies at the University of Miami.