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Capital One × NCAA: March Madness·2016
- Integrated Marketing
- Partnerships & Sponsorships
- Digital & Social
Full-court press, in real time.
An integrated TV, social, digital, talent and on-site campaign, and the real-time engagement layer that turned three weeks of March Madness into one conversation with a 4M+ audience.
The situation
Capital One’s brand goal for the 2016 tournament was blunt: be the most talked-about brand of March Madness. The campaign was built to be integrated from the start: TV spots that followed Barkley, Jackson and Lee’s road trip to the Final Four (the sing-along included), the NCAA sponsorship rights, cardholder access and priority entry, the JamFest concert on site, and a hashtag, #RoadToOne, that had to hold all of it together in social. The brand social engagement team was responsible for the enterprise handles and a four-million-person audience. That year the team ran the tournament with half its usual staff.
The diagnosis
The spots made people feel something for thirty seconds. The comments made them feel something for three weeks.
What I ran
I led the day-to-day as the team’s platform subject-matter expert, and the job had four distinct shapes. Before tip-off, the setup that made speed possible. During the games, the real-time layer. At the Final Four, the live activation. After, the reporting that told the brand what it had earned.
Before
Build for speed.
- Engagement dashboards configured to find the right conversations fast
- Bespoke reaction GIFs of the talent, ready to deploy
- Selection Sunday contest: give Sir Charles a new nickname
During
Talk like the tournament.
- Real-time replies to fans and other brands: brackets, buzzer-beaters, the running jokes from the spots
- “Charles Broccoli” wins, announced on air; a fan takes home $10,000
- Bespoke reaction GIFs deployed in the moment: 4MM+ views
At the Final Four
Be there, on the fans’ phones.
- Capital One’s first Snapchat geofilter, for the free JamFest concert
- 42% of everyone who swiped to it used it
- Real-time engagement through the Final Four weekend
After
Prove what it earned.
- Post-campaign brand reporting: mentions, reach, entries, engagement rates
- The record the 9th Shorty Awards entry and the Forbes verdict drew on
What changed
Campaign results per the public 9th Shorty Awards entry (Real Time Response finalist) and the campaign recap; engagement-rate goals doubled on Facebook and Twitter.
Ranked first among the tournament’s brand marketers.
A Forbes contributor column put Capital One at the top for “greatest impact and engagement: perfect cross-channel promotion between social media, tv spots, and events.” Frank O’Brien, Forbes/OnMarketing, April 6, 2016.
These are campaign-team outcomes, and a lot of people earned them. My part was the real-time layer that made the cross-channel piece true.
My role
Associate Marketing Manager, Brand Digital Strategy (2015–17); brand social engagement team.
Built with
The brand social engagement team, who staffed the real-time layer with me across three weeks; the agency creative team behind the spots and the GIF library; sponsorship and PR, who owned the NCAA relationship and the JamFest activation.