FanSection Blog

Tostitos jumped head-long into social media advertising during the college football bowl season with the “Race to the Bowl” promotion around the Fiesta Bowl.  The promotion, which consisted primarily of a Facebook page, pitted students from The University of Texas versus those from Ohio State in an Amazing Race of sorts.  Students from the two universities competed in various tasks and contests leading up to the Fiesta Bowl which was played last night between the two teams in Phoenix.  Incidentally, or not so incidentally since I bleed burnt orange, the Longhorns defeated the Buckeyes 24-21 with a touchdown pass from Colt McCoy with 16 seconds left in game.  Team Texas also fared well in the contest as it soundly defeated Team Buckeye to win the $200,000 first prize for the school’s general scholarship fund.  The contest definitely made an impression on the captain of Team Texas who had this to say about the experience:

“This entire experience has been nothing short of amazing. After hearing about the ‘Race to the Bowl,’ I knew we had to compete as we’re the loudest, most die-hard group of Longhorn fans. We definitely proved it this week,” said Dani Peebles, captain of the team of University of Texas fans. “We’re so thankful to Tostitos for not only giving us the opportunity of lifetime, but also allowing us to give back to our school. We couldn’t have asked for a better way to cheer on the Longhorns in the Fiesta Bowl.

To promote the campaign, Frito Lay (parent company of Tostitos) launched the Facebook page and then seeded ads targeted at Ohio State and Texas students throughout the site.  The call to action was to enter the contest which Frito Lay expected would be a few hundred entries.  They ended up receiving over a thousand.  Students and fans were also encouraged to join groups supporting the two teams, and as of January 1st those groups had 239 for Team Texas and 137 for Team Buckeye.  There is no indication about whether or not those numbers are deemed successful by Frito Lay, but they seem a little small to me. compared to the FanSection Texas application with over 100K Facebook users, and the FanSection Ohio State app with well over 200K users.  This is yet another example of how difficult it is for brands to build mass audiences on Facebook with branded pages and applications. I personally didn’t hear about the contest until I read this Marketing Vox article, and I’m on Facebook every day, multiple times per day.  It seems that Frito Lay could have done a better job targeting hard-core fans of both schools by utilizing existing fan pages and applications which have hundreds of thosands of users across Facebook.

The good news is that big consumer brands continue to explore opportunities on Facebook and on other social media sites.  The challenge is to make sure they do it right so that they get the ROI they need to support further exploration and advertising dollars.