• by Karl Greenberg , December 28, 2015

Goodyear owns New Year's Eve, or part of it, as it has title sponsorship of the College Football Playoff Semifinal at the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic. The company is driving its partnership with a 10-day campaign on social media leading up to the New Year’s game. The effort dangles a sweepstakes around the double-entendre encouraging consumers to make 2016 a “good year.” 

The campaign at the company's Twitter site offers fans who follow @Goodyear, and retweet sponsored tweets via #Goodyear, a chance to win prizes like free tires and Goodyear Blimp. The grand prize is a 2016-model sports car. 

The Akron, Ohio-based tire manufacturer says the sweepstakes extends to the “New Year’s Six” College Football Playoff bowl game markets, which include Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta and New Orleans. In each city, per Goodyear, people can vie for a pair of tickets to their respective game by being first to find the location of a Goodyear ambassador in a scavenger hunt-like sprint. The specific location will be revealed as the promotion goes live in each market.

Goodyear inked the deal to be title sponsor of the Cotton Bowl last year, with the first activation being the 2015 New Year’s Eve game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. Goodyear has a pole position in terms of brand equity because of its blimp fleet, which has been an airborne fixture for over half a century. So, the timing is particularly good to offer a free ride in the gondola as a key sweepstakes award, as the company this fall replaced the The Spirit of America blimp with a new airship, the Spirit of Innovation --  technically a dirigible. 

In September the company launched a campaign via AOR GSD&M, about how the blimps (actually the new ones aren't blimps, but dirigibles, since they have a rigid substructure) and how they have been flying over big events for 60 years, and drawing a parallel with well-known traditions at football universities. 

Goodyear also ties into NASCAR with marketing, as it has been official tire for the sport's three major series (Sprint Cup, Nationwide and the Camping World Truck series), since 1997, a partnership Goodyear and NASCAR extended again in 2011 in a contract running through the 2017 season. Earlier this year the company launched a humorous video campaign feature NASCAR driver Carl Edwards that talked about the technology behind its tires.