Just a few weeks after the Super Bowl, the collective attention of consumers and marketers has turned to the Spring season’s three-week long sporting juggernaut, March Madness.
The attention advertisers get by aligning with the big basketball tourney draws some of the largest national brands and budgets each year across CPG, QSR, Auto, Tech, FinServ and Entertainment. They’re invested in title-level integrated sponsorships, and splashy thirty-second TV spots, with their strategies in development many months, if not more than a year, prior to debuting their campaigns.
In addition to the largest spenders beaming their brands onto screens of all sizes, all kinds of marketers – including local and regional – are also able to tap into the hoops hype, leveraging sustained attention on the tournament as a time to innovate and breakthrough across various channels and platforms.
So what’s on this year’s brand plans to break through during March Madness? Here are some trends we’re watching:
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- Themes of inclusion and equity. Highlight clips of student athletes like Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston airing regularly in sports media have made them some of the biggest household names in all of college sports, and Buick is one of the major brands leaning in, directly linking their online ads to drive live app viewing of the Women’s NCAA tournament games. Our 2H-2022 Trust in Advertising Report revealed that DE&I is the #1 social value publicly supported and advanced by marketers and advertisers. Where and how else might we see brands lean in?
- Local advertising boost thanks to NIL changes. With the NCAA finally loosening name-image-likeness restrictions that prevented student athletes from monetizing their own talent, regional and local businesses now have another way to market to targeted audiences from among passionate collegiate fan bases. While the athletes they support are enjoying the rare national spotlight, how might locally focused advertisers innovate not only using TV, but also on the social channels frequented by college-aged audiences?
- More creativity in social and experiential extensions. For years we’ve seen brands tap into the fun of bracketology – whether for the basketball at hand, or in completely unrelated areas. And there is always the unexpected (Cinderella teams, breakout hairstyles, unforgettable fan reactions) that smart social media managers can quickly plug into and amplify. This year, we’re watching to see how brands evolve their social playbooks with unique activations, like Nissan’s partnership with TikTok to drive user-generated social video. Which marketers are set up to be an indelible part of the conversation when the darlings of the March Madness internet emerge?
- Ripples into podcast advertising. As sports-related podcast programming has become timelier, often airing within a few of hours of the events, the punditry and deeper analysis afforded by longer format audio is also likely to get a boost in listenership during March Madness. Further, many of the most high-profile athletes competing in the tournaments are soon to be professional prospects for the 2023 NBA and WNBA drafts later in the year. To what extent will advertisers realize incremental reach and engagement by targeting more basketball fans through their ear buds?
When the final team standing hoists the trophy, marketers and media providers will also be taking stock of the unexpected ways the industry moved forward around one of the year’s biggest live sports tentpoles.
By Sarah Bolton, EVP Market Intelligence, Advertiser Perceptions
