March 2016 - American Sweepstakes

Welcome to March Madness – better get your brackets done

Every March college basketball takes over, so welcome to March Madness. You’ll be hearing much about the women’s tournament at the same time as the men’s tournament. The women’s madness starts with 64 teams and for the past three years has ended with UConn players taking home the championship. The men’s madness starts with 68 teams with 32 teams making it by winning their conference tournaments. The other 36 teams are chosen by the NCAA on Selection Sunday (last Sunday) based on their record and strength of schedule.

The first game of the men’s tournament is tomorrow, March 15, and the National Championship game will take place on April 4th in Houston. In between there’s the Sweet 16 the Elite Eight, and the Final Four. So if you want to play along, you need to get your bracket picks in by noon tomorrow, March 17.

So last year I got involved and joined the madness. My daily morning email from #theSkimm gave me a pretty good overview of the tournament and this year invited me to join the ESPN Tournament Challenge.

Once I joined I was invited to enter the Allstate Tourney Sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to the 2016 Final Four in Houston and $50,000 in prize money. I just had to fill out a online entry form. Allstate is an official corporate sponsor of NCAA March Madness. I was also invited to enter the Acura Precision Crafted Performance Tourney Challenge Sweepstakes. One winner and their guest could win an exclusive trip to tour of the ESPN Studios. All I had to do was click an opt-in box to enter.

There are so many different bracket challenges that invite people to participate, not just this one. There is the Capital One March Madness Bracket Challenge which is the official bracket game of the NCAA. By creating a bracket you have a chance to win one of 16 prizes, including the grand prize, which is a trip to the 2017 Final Four as a VIP guest. Other prizes include $50 gift cards to Fanatics.com. You can also join groups and ask friends to join your group. As of now they are posting the top picks on the site of the teams that bracket players have picked to win. The Kansas Jayhawks are currently number 1 with 23.9% of players choosing them.

Reese’s is the official candy partner of NCAA March Madness and they are sponsoring the Official NCAA Bracket. They have created the hashtag #MarchMood and encouraging people to join the brackets on their Facebook page. Last year One of our client’s, Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt, teamed up with Reece’s on The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Slam Dunk Sweepstakes which offered a chance to win tickets to this year’s Final Four games. Menchie’s was promoting the new flavor made with real Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. So we have on lucky winner attending the game this year.

Yahoo is also back at it this year with the Fantasy Sports Tourney Pick’em brackets. Here you have a chance at a $50,000 prize if you pick’em well. There are many more brackets you can join.

Once again, CBS Sports and Turner Sports will air every game across four national television networks — TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV — and you can watch every game on NCAA March Madness Live.

We are lucky to see our Syracuse Orange team back in the tournament this year. They are again playing the same team they played in the tourney two years ago, Dayton. We also will be seeing the Buffalo Bulls back for a second time. Go Orange and Bulls. We’ll see if either can get buy the first round. Good luck to all teams.

Here’s a couple of new sweepstakes that target Millennials

Playing games is not one of my favorite pastimes, but it is big with some of my younger friends and family members, and they’re part of a huge market. The global gaming market is predicted to hit $93 billion by 2019 and should continue growing at least for the rest of the decade. That’s the latest assessment from PricewaterhouseCoopers from in it’s Global and Entertainment Media Outlook 2015-2019 report.

I mention this because we recently signed a 6-month contract to handle the administration of some sweepstakes giveaways and contests for BANDI NAMCO Entertainment America for their Anime Games. BANDI NAMCO Entertainment specializes in the production and sales of home and portable video games on all platforms. They also offer free games across the web and social media as well as mobile.

The promotions that we will be administering will be promoted on the company’s Play Anime Games Facebook page. The first sweepstakes started on Monday and will be running till end of Sunday, March 13. The giveaway is for a chance to win the ULTIMATE Digimon DVD box set Giveaway which features 4 seasons of Digital Monsters, 32 DVD’s! The agency that we are working with is utilizing the Woobox platform to collect the entries. So may the best Digi-Fan win. There will be more to come!

A client from our sister company, Alliance Sweepstakes, that they are continuing to work with on 2016 promotions is Deschutes Brewery, a craft beer company located in Oregon. They again are running another text-to-win sweepstakes promotion and just kicked off a new one in February. To enter the DrinkTanks Juggernaut Sweepstakes consumers are first invited to text the keyword “Juggernaut” to the shortcode 65047. They will then receive a text message back with a link to the sweepstakes entry page located on the Sponsor’s website.

People are allowed to enter once a day. There will be 10 monthly winners drawn each month for 5 months who will each win a Deschutes Brewery Juggernaut growler. The mobile provider is Momares that is utilizing their Solark platform that enables us to offer this service to our clients. I featured this post that Marcos Menendez , one of the co-founders of Momares, wrote that speaks to the benefits of utilizing text messaging.

Both of these promotions that I featured today are a great example of how to market to Millennials, those 18-34. They prefer to use text messaging over emails and they like games. Millennials are now the largest population in the U.S. at 77 million. So we marketers should all be planning on how to best reach them, not just beer and game companies!

It’s a win, win with Laura’s Lean Beef 60 Day Challenge

The Laura’s Lean Beef 60 Day Challenge is offering a win, win for all who decide to participate. We’re assisting the Laura’s Lean Beef (LLB) team with the administration of this unique promotion that just launched yesterday, March 1, and is running till April 29. LLB is motivating people to hop on the fitness bandwagon with the goal of a healthier you with the incentive to win some great prizes.

The timing of the promotion ties nicely into their new website that LLB recently launched. They are promoting this 60 Day Challenge on their home page as well as their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Here’s how it works:

First, participants need to create an account. They can use their Facebook profile or email address, assign a username and password and upload an optional profile photo. They can also connect the account to their Fitbit which will record their daily activity from there if they choose.

Once the account is created, they then need to start a challenge by clicking on the “Start a Challenge Button” and choosing one of the four challenges: water, nutrition, sleep or steps. Participants can interact with others who have joined the 60 Day Challenge community. They can publish updates on how they are doing by uploading photos, videos, text or use their Fitbit.

Participants are encouraged to log-in once a day to receive another entry into the sweepstakes part of the challenge. They have a chance to win one of the weekly prizes, which is a $10 LLB voucher, and several other prizes that will be awarded at the end of the challenge by a random drawing from all entries.

Two Grand Prize winners will each receive a large Big Green Egg® barbecue cooker that includes an EGG® Nest®, EGG Mate®, a 10# bag of charcoal, a box of charcoal starters, a grill gripper and an ash tool along with a LLB branded grill kit and a $50 LLB voucher. Two Second Place winners will each receive a fitness package that includes a Fit Bit Charge, a gym bag, a water bottle, a pair of socks, headphones and a $25 LLB voucher. Three Third Place winners will each receive a similar fitness package, without the Fit Bit Charge and only a $10 LLB voucher. 100 Fourth Place winners get a $10 LLB voucher. Total prize pool value is over $4,600.

After day one there are already many participants who have created accounts and logged in with their updates. The team at Laura’s Lean Beef understand that people have a tough time making smart decisions about their health and wellness. Uncertainty about what to eat and how much to exercise can create obstacles that can delay a person’s health and wellness goals before they even get started. So they felt it was important to support consumers along their health and wellness journey with this fun and motivating challenge.

So it’s not too late to join the challenge yourself and follow along with others. Remember the LLB promotion slogan which is #FoodLoveBalance.