Tag: March Madness

March Madness excitement works for the Bar-S Bracket Challenge

We will soon see the end to this year’s March Madness. It’s now down to the Final Four, South Carolina and Gonzaga will meet in the first game and then Oregon and North Carolina will play each other to take place at the University of Phoenix on April 1. Then the championship game will be on April 3.

So will it include the two Carolinas? North Carolina is looking to make their second consecutive appearance in the national title game, while South Carolina and Gonzaga will make their first Final Four ever. Oregon hasn’t made the national semifinal since the first Final Four in 1939.

The 2017 Women’s Final Four will begin Friday, March 31, in Dallas as the South Carolina Gamecocks face the Stanford Cardinal and the UConn Huskies take on the Mississippi State Bulldogs. The winners of the two national semifinal match ups will meet in the national championship game on Sunday. UConn currently has an amazing 111-game win streak, as in consecutive games.

Many people’s men’s brackets were shot by some early upsets and a few Cinderella stories. As always there are many promotions going on from those brands that are official sponsors of the NCAA. Capital One is the official bank and credit card of the NCAA and each year they run their March Madness Bracket Challenge. I’ve participated in this in previous years, but didn’t get around to it this year. They also have the March Madness Tournament Run which let’s you make individual picks at any time throughout the tournament.

Through our sister company, Alliance Sweepstakes, we’ve been working with a client who is not an official sponsor of the NCAA, but has come up with a very clever and  legitimate way to get involved with the excitement. Bar-S Foods, a maker of hot dogs, lunch meat, bacon, corn dogs and sausages, is running the Bar-S Bracket Challenge on their Facebook page.

We kicked this promotion off on February 28 and it runs until April 9. The team has been posting on the page at various times throughout the promotion offering chances to win a prize by leaving a comment on that post. Each post asks participants to pick one of the two hot dogs that they like the best.

In this post it presents the Texas Hot Dog vs. the Coney Island Hot Dogs. Five of these posts are each offering a chance to win a package of Bar-S brand swag. Seven of these posts are offering one grand prize winner $5,000! So all the comments made on all seven posts will be included in the random drawing for the grand prize which will take place next week.

The participation has been great with anywhere from 700 to over a 1,000 comments on each post. There will be one more post for a chance at the grand prize and there are two more posts that will offer the brand swag package. So you still have time to check it out and play.

As far as the Final Four, Vegas is giving the men’s tournament to North Carolina and the women’s they are also with the UConn Huskies. We’ll see if each team can pull it off.

Welcome to March Madness – better get your brackets done

NCAA-2015Every 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.

PrintThe 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.

ESPN Tournament ChallengeSo 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.

March-Madness-Capital-OneThere 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.

Reeses NCAAReese’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.