College football stadiums are hard to fill up: students just aren’t attending the games like they used to. In 2014, college football attendance bottomed out with the lowest attendance rates in 14 years. This might make it seem impossible to get your brand in front of students at football games, but you can tap into game day rituals like tailgating and watch parties for brand promotion. Here are some examples of how brands are using brand reps to reach students where they are enjoying the game and football festivities:
Tailgating
A brand that’s performing very well, thanks to football culture, is Southern Tide. Students are eagerly stepping up to the plate to promote the brand through their College Brand Ambassador Program. The brand is historically familiar to students at SEC schools, but hasn’t always been so well-known outside of the South. Thanks to their ambassador program, the brand is becoming synonymous with college football and Greek Life all around the country. Students in the midwest are hosting tailgate parties and using these parties as opportunities to promote the brand, and it’s working. Southern Tide now has student ambassadors at over 250 colleges and universities throughout the country.
Watch Parties
If students aren’t tailgating or cheering from the bleachers, they’re probably either at home hosting a party or attending a party with their friends. With the help of brand ambassadors, Google was able to reach students at football watch parties. Brand ambassadors at Arizona State University hosted football watch parties to promote Google TV: “I teamed up with Residential Life to do a viewing party with lots of pizza and subs. Fifty to 100 people showed up throughout the game, and we rooted for the team with Google foam fingers and megaphones.” Whether or not ASU won that game, Google won some major kudos that day thanks to their brand reps.
And, of course, you can’t forget about the students that actually attend the games. Be sure to use your brand reps to reach them and take advantage of meaningful touch points during football season.
photo credit: By Srgragg (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
