Lenovo, the official technology sponsor of the NFL, is leveraging that investment to the hilt with a promotion that will take one fantasy football fan to every major NFL event next year.
The Lenovo Fantasy Coach Season Pass Contest will reward one fan with the ability to attend the 2013 NFL Draft, scouting combine, training camps, home game tickets and trips to both the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl in 2014. All contestants have to do is state in 100 words or less why they are the greatest fantasy football coach ever.
“We tried to envision what is the greatest thing we could offer a fantasy coach,” Kevin Berman, director of North American advertising and marketing services for Lenovo, tells Marketing Daily. "The whole thing is around fantasy. [Fantasy players] think, watch and do football in ways that are different than your average fan."
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To promote the contest, Lenovo partnered with FunnyorDie.com to create a series of videos featuring Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III and Chicago Bears running back Matt Forte in which the athletes are confronted by “coaches” about their poor fantasy performances. “I’ve never played football or coached an actually football team in my life,” says a fantasy coach, encouraging Griffin to score more points. “But once you put on this whistle and start telling people what to do, everyone just assumes you’re qualified to coach.” (Among the advice he offers Griffin: fake taking a knee to end a game and running for a touchdown and throwing a pass into a lineman’s back and then catching it, “which counts as a reception and a completion.”)
“FunnyOrDie.com brings us a credible voice with the millennial audience and a guaranteed connection point through which to communicate,” Berman says.
Lenovo will also promote the contest through digital advertising on sporting Web sites (like ESPN.com and NFL.com), as well as through social media, email marketing and public relations, Berman says. The goal is to engage consumers using their interest and push them toward the company’s Web site, he says.
“The excitement that NFL garners among its fans is something we’re trying to harness,” he says. “This gives us a way to engage with consumers in a way that we hadn’t been able to before.”