By Paul Peavy
The Super Bowl is the largest media event in the world! So what do sponsors need to boost attention? Apparently individual attention from you.
Yes, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, and Doritos needed so much attention they asked for your individual involvement. If a company whose ads are going to be seen by millions needs to boost up its numbers think of how much difference your event could get with a little more attention.
What all three of these companies did was to ask you to make a personal commitment. In turn, you might get your 15 seconds of fame or a free pizza. Either way, I’ll take it.
Pepsi asked you to go to their website and take a picture of yourself and your shoes a few different ways. Thy put them together in a montage to open the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Did they need to do this to get numbers? Probably not. But then again, any publicity is good publicity, and their name got bantered about and their website got visited more than it would have.
Papa John’s got us really into the game itself without actually having to take a hit from a linebacker. All you had to do was go their website and correctly pick the winner of the coin toss to receive a free large pizza. I got mine, and I might just turn into a regular customer!
Pizza Hut made an ingenious connection to the on field action. So ingenious I am mad I did not see this obvious one coming. They connected the “Hut, hut!” to their Pizza “Hut.” Genious! People went to their website and made scenes of themselves calling out “Hut, hut!” and now these people are famous.
Doritos is the granddaddy of them all. They ran a contest where they put five commercials produced by customers into the super-expensive commercial slots during the game. This is the seventh year that Doritos has offered up their commercials this way and the prize just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
So what can you learn from these clever companies? Making connections to individuals is still ultra important. Why not have participants come up with a new slogan for a new T-shirt, or post a video or a joke using one of your key phrases to get them even more strongly connected to your event.
You don’t have to give away a million dollars, maybe just a T-shirt, maybe an entry fee to your next event. Or maybe the reward is the fun of being publicly recognized in general.
What are your ideas on this topic? E-mail me at info@sportseventsmagazine.com.
