IMPACTED TICKET SALES AND CREATED FAN ENGAGEMENT FOR THE OUTBACK BOWL.
About The Outback Bowl
The Outback Bowl is an annual college football game that is typically played on New Year’s Day featuring teams from the Big Ten Conference and the SEC. The game is the pinnacle of a week full of area events that take Tampa Bay by storm each year.
With a new creative process, The Outback Bowl saw a massive increase in ticket sales revenue and fan engagement while supporting the local Tampa Bay area.
Creative Process
In order to boost ticket sales and create fan engagement around the Outback Bowl, we selected and targeted three groups during their active phase of the college football season:
Regular Season: SEC/B1G Ten fans and those who showed interest in pages related to the state of Florida. Postseason: Minnesota Golden Gophers and Auburn Tiger fans. A separate local campaign targeted users in Southwest Florida who hailed from either the east or midwest.Bowl Week: Minnesota Golden Gophers and Auburn Tiger fans were geo-targeted in a campaign that reached users in local areas.
RESULTS
Highly-Targeted Social Ad Campaigns:
Throughout the regular season, we targeted fans of teams with a high chance of playing in the 2020 Outback Bowl. Ads directing users to “like” the Outback Bowl Facebook page helped increase website traffic. During the postseason, we pivoted our strategy in order to reach Tampa Bay locals who were searching for a fun Tampa Bay area experience.
Digital Advertising:
Geo-targeting local football fans around Raymond James Stadium one week prior to the Outback Bowl was the final phase of our ad strategy. Fans in local bars were shown ticket ads on their mobile devices while they browsed websites and mobile apps. This campaign allowed us to capture the most avid football fans in Tampa Bay at a time they were most comfortable–during a Bucs game.
Bowl Week & Game Day Event Coverage:
More than 10 bowl week events were streamed live and featured on social media as the week’s events unfolded. Live social media posts resulted in large engagement rates and reached millions of users during the events. Our event team supported live coverage of the pre-game events such as tailgating, player arrivals, and warm-ups along with live coverage of the post-game press conference and trophy presentation.
“Football In Paradise” Social Media Contest”
This was designed to offer weekly entry into a season-long “pick ‘em” contest where users select the winners of 10 SEC and BIG Ten conference matchups.Each week, a prize was awarded to a winner selected at random. The more correct picks made per week, the more entries participating fans received for both weekly prizes and the grand prize: two free tickets to the 2020 Outback Bowl. Users also could accumulate extra entries by sharing their results and referring their friends via social media.
Here’s what we accomplished:
2,600+ generated leads,
Social reach increased by nearly one million users.
Over $22,000 in ticket sales revenue.
11.5+ million impressions.
Over 1,500 unique leads.
Up to 22% increase in social media likes.
4th Most followed college bowl game.
