Alltel Integrates Social Media into College Basketball Promotion Seeking Chief Basketball Officer of Fans

To continue on with the college basketball frenzy that is starting to take over this country (known to us Americans as March Madness) here's another interesting interactive promotion that's been developed around it this year. It also serves as a great example of a promotion that utilized blogs to help get the message out, a topic that I recently wrote a post about called Interactive Promotions Together with Blogs Create a Winning Combination.

Alltel Wireless is giving fans a chance to compete for college basketball's dream job in Alltel's My Circle Pick & Roll Challenge. This promotion is similar to Coke Zero's "Ultimate Dream Job" NCAA Fan Contest that will "hire" 4 fans to blog about the 2008 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship games. Alltel's one grand prize winner will be the first-ever Chief Basketball Officer (CBO) of Fans who will earn a six-figure "salary" and spend his/her first weekend "on-the-job" traveling by private jet to the conference tournaments.

The ultimate goal of the promotion was to generate buzz and drive people to FanU.com, an online community for college sports fans, were they were able to register and test their college basketball IQ in a weekly My Circle Pick and Roll game. The game consisted of 5 weekly periods which started back on January 10th and ended on February 22nd. The more correct games picked, the more points earned.

In addition to accumulating these points, registered entrants could receive bonus points by completing various tasks that they were reminded of via e-mail and text messages. For example, they earned 100 points each time they voted in Alltel's weekly Fan U poll, commented on blogs, trash-talked with rivals as well as some other opportunities.

The player who had the most weekly points won a $1,000 prize, while players scoring 8,000 or more points throughout the five week competition win a free Skinit for their wireless phone. Then on March 12th the three fans with the highest point total will travel to Charlotte, N.C. to compete in an interview process conducted by a panel of celebrity judges, including legendary college basketball analyst Dick Vitale. The fan that displays the most spirit and basketball savvy will land the coveted position CBO of Fans.

"As the Official Wireless Partner of Fans, selecting our first-ever Chief Basketball Officer is an exciting and important event for Alltel Wireless," said Laura Cook, senior vice president of marketing communications for Alltel Wireless.  "We look forward to rewarding the winner of the My Circle Pick & Roll Challenge with a six-figure salary and all the perks deserving of the CBO of Fans title."

The grand prize winner and a guest will spend an action-packed weekend jet-setting to his/her choice of college basketball conference tournaments, keeping in touch with friends and family on the new Samsung Hue handset, collecting a $100,000 "salary" and walking away with bragging rights for life.

Now to get the message out about this promotion and generate buzz, Alltel reached out to the fans at several colleges that they have partnerships with such as NC State, Duke, Michigan State, Arizona, Creighton, Oklahoma, New Mexico, South Florida, Kansas State, South Dakota State and UTEP.

Critical to their success was involving people in the program who are actual basketball fans, like the team from Alltel's PR firm, Taylor, who could talk basketball with the fans and not be accused of spamming. They connected with fans at each of those schools through email, message boards, blogs and other social media outlets where those fans congregate.

Alltel also created a blog outreach program which connected with both national and local bloggers who cover college basketball, sports business and promotions/marketing (Donna's Promo Talk was one of them). Some bloggers placed promotional widgets on their sites and some wrote posts.

Here's a few examples of some of the buzz that the promotion generated:

• Black and Green Irish Men's Basketball Report
• College Fast Break
• The Wolf Web - North Carolina State University Student Run website
• Rush the Court - Featured widget in sidebar
• College Hoops Journal
• Smitty's Notes - Guide to Goings-on in Winston-Salem, NC
• Hawgs Illustrated.com - Forum
• Lines From Linda

Samira Zebian, director of sponsorship marketing at Alltel, spoke about why Alltel decided to conduct a program with a social media component to it.

"Gone are the days where sports fans engage with their favorite teams solely at an arena or in front of their televisions. The widespread use of broadband Internet and mobile technology has helped introduce a new way to experience sports like college basketball. Today fans are multi-tasking, watching highlights and monitoring scores of several games simultaneously while at the same time sharing their opinions by blogging, instant messaging and text messaging from their laptops or wireless phones. We created our My Circle Pick & Roll Challenge on FanU.com with those fans in mind."

This use of social media helped to create a two-way dialog, thus engaging the target 18-34 demographic that normally is very resistant to traditional media in which Alltel's research had shown. They did however also use some traditional media in the campaign such as:

• A TV spot entitled "Boardroom" featuring Chad the Alltel Guy and the sales guys with a promotional tag.
• Communication to all Alltel customers with their January bill
• Promotional messages during Raycom Sports broadcasts
• Radio spots featuring spokesperson Dick Vitale on Alltel's sponsorship media
• In-store activation elements such as collateral, plasma features, and an instant win game
• Online media featuring Chad & Dick placed on CSTV.com as well as Facebook

This is a true example of an integrated promotional marketing campaign that features social media as a key strategic component. Alltel is one of the brands that really gets it. Not only did they understand how to communicate to this audience, they also created a unique and compelling prize incentive to dangle in front of these fans.

I'll let you know who the finalists are as well as the winner that becomes the first-ever CBO of fans. I hope to be able to report on more successful, integrated Social Sweeps programs like this as we continue on throughout 2008. So, please keep tuning in.