What are the odds? Marketing musings on March Madness
So you didn’t win $1 billion dollars either? Given the odds, that’s nothing to feel bad about. Nobody won. In fact, no one in recorded history has ever picked a perfect bracket. It’s almost impossible just to pick a perfect first round! Out of tens of millions of brackets, I am aware of only 1 individual this year that did that, but his bracket was busted just 4 games later leaving him 27 games short of the once-again-unattainable 63-0 bracket perfection.
As a marketer, I am impressed each year with the amount of attention the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament receives regardless of any paid advertising. If you didn’t fill out a bracket, you likely know someone that did. It’s not just for die-hards or even everyday fans anymore – it’s fun for everyone, like my 12- and 10-year-old sons, who despite terrible odds, picked their favorite team to go to the finals and win (and yes, both of their brackets were busted in the first round). People that otherwise could not care less and fans alike obsess over making their picks and trying to win it all in their company pool or among their peers. Filling out brackets seems to have consistently grown in popularity, but in so doing it has also become commonplace. You can submit brackets at work, at church, at countless sports related websites, and a thousand other places.
And don’t forget Quicken. Their billion dollar bracket challenge was excellent at breaking through the noise with something new and fresh. It was something so ludicrous it was all over the internet, all over social media, and all over the news in no time. I haven’t run into anyone that did not hear about it. A billion dollars? Just for picking the perfect bracket, something I’ll be doing anyway? With no entry fee? (Well, not in dollars at least.) Count me in!
At first it sounded like a potentially risky bet, but what were the odds? According to mathematician Jeff Bergen of DePaul University, the odds of randomly picking a perfect bracket are less then 1 in 9 quintillion – that’s a 9 followed by 18 zeros. Add a bit of knowledge to your selection process and you can up the odds to 1 in 128 billion. A few months ago I wrote a piece about one of my Grandad’s favorite sayings: you can’t win if you don’t play. Given those odds though, this contest seemed like one that you could never win no matter how many times you played. You are much, much more likely to win the Mega Millions lottery, become president, or die by vending machine than you would be to pick a perfect bracket.
Which all adds up to what? A brilliant marketing stunt centered around a very popular event with a very low risk; one that generated untold buzz and attention, not to mention a lot of data on a lot of folks for Quicken. Data they could then use to show the value of their products to a targeted group of individuals.
So what are you doing to capture your customers’ attention and add a little enjoyment to their interactions with your brand? What are the odds that your potential and current customers come away from those interactions feeling like they got real value out of it? Are you marketing to them individually, targeting their needs and wants? Stunts can be fun and even worthwhile, but at the end of the day, odds are that the end goal is to build lasting relationships and provide real value that will pay dividends in the long run. And that is a win-win for everyone.
