Baseball’s winding up and football is in full swing, but maker Volvo Cars of North America is thinking basketball. Specifically, it has signed for a second year to sponsor the games of the Big East college conference, which takes in 16 universities around the Northeast. And it’s integrating that season-long sponsorship with a campaign that aims to name the “Biggest Big East Fan” in social media at next year’s March Madness tournament.
The promotion has selected 16 alumni as blogger representatives, one from each school in the conference. They will post daily to a microsite run by the campaign, MyBigEastVolvo.com, throughout the season. At the end of the regulation game period, Volvo and its agencies will select one of those bloggers as the most interesting and proficient content provider, with site visitors adding their input as part of a popular vote. That winner will win an expense-paid trip to New York City to watch the Big East Championship Tournament in Madison Square Garden
Starting in December, each of the 16 will also get a weekend trip back to their alma mater and the use of a 2011 Volvo S60 during their stay.
The campaign is an elaboration of a smaller-scale sponsorship that Volvo ran with the Big East last year, involving primarily vehicle displays at the championship and some email campaigning. “Because we identified that basketball, and specifically college basketball, was a real passion point with our target audience [of adults 25-54], we wanted to build upon the groundwork laid in 2009,” says Greg Arena, vice president and account director for agency MPG.
“We were originally thinking about what we could do with the students. But then we took a step back and realized that our target is really older, a bit more affluent. So we thought the alumni would be a great network to tap into.”
The 16 alumni bloggers—11 men and five women—were chosen by Volvo, MPG and social marketing agency Cake by monitoring social media and determining the biggest influencers for each school. The agencies were more interested in overall influence than in finding bloggers who were specifically passionate fans of either basketball or their own schools.
“Definitely our directive wasn’t just to tap into basketball fans,” says Michelle Shildkret, director of social media and digital communications with Cake. “As you can see on the site, one of the contestants has a fashion blog, one has a lifestyle blog, and while a lot of them blog about their alma mater, some of them blog about sports in general. We didn’t want to limit the campaign to people who had the same background and point of view.”
But the campaign is basically about sports, and in fact has already resulted in one large event: All the blogger contenders were given admission to Big East Media Day, a much-sought-after ticket to meet and speak with the coaches of the conference teams held October 20 in Madison Square Garden.
“We encouraged them to tweet and check in via Foursquare about their experiences, and asked them to use the hashtag #VolvoS60 in their updates,” says Shildkret. “There was so much Twitter activity at this event from our influencers that other people in the Twitter world were saying, ‘If you’re interested in what’s going on at Media Day, follow the hashtag #VolvoS60.’”
“The car is the most exciting car to drive that we’ve built in a long time, and probably one of the most athletic carts we’ve ever made,” says Rick Bryant for the Northeast Region, Volvo Cars of North America. “Since the Big East fits so closely with our sales region, we kicked around with them ways to get people to experience the car. We opted to follow these 16 people and use them in a trip back to their alma mater, where they will get to actually drive the car and talk about it in their own words. We think that communicates something we can’t do with traditional advertising.”
Volvo’s current S60 model is being touted in national broadcast, print and online advertising as the “naughty” Volvo and is intended to re-brand the company, long known for reliability and safety but not necessarily for performance or sports-car handling. In fact, a separate Web site for the model is reached thought the URL Naughty.VolvoCars.com and is the subject of a promotional “Naughty Volvo Tour” that will offer test drives around the country through mid-November.
But the branding on the MyBigEastVolvo.com site is very light, with the Volvo logo and a picture of the car at the top of the page but no links to company Web sites. When the influencers attend their college weekends, it’s anticipated that they will produce video and photo content that features the car. But other than that, the main connection to Volvo, at least until basketball heats up in January, will be radio spots during the Big East games.
The sponsorship on which this campaign relies includes naming Volvo “the official vehicle of the Big East Conference & Championships” and is managed by ISP Sports. MPG and Cake, both divisions of Havas, are also joined by sister unit Media Contacts, which will handle digital marketing.
As a result of the partnership, Volvo will get brand exposure during the regular season and the tournament phase, including banners outside the Garden, courtside signage and scoreboard promotions. Volvo will also be a featured sponsor of the ISP Network’s national radio broadcasts of the Big East championship games next year.
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