"March Madness" good launchpad for Discover Boating ads
By IBI Magazine/Michael Verdon
The Discover Boating national ad campaign got off to a strong start this month as part of a live streaming video webcast by CBS sports of the NCAA basketball tournament series. Informally, the tournament is known as "March Madness" because it is so widely viewed. The banner ads, which run at least twice during each game, have increased traffic to the newly redesigned Discoverboating.com website by 300 per cent on some days of the tournament, according to Carl Blackwell, vice president of marketing at NMMA. "These ads are reaching the same demographic profile as our target consumers," Blackwell told IBI. "That means we're reaching our target audience very efficiently through these webcasts." A Discover Boating statement noted that during the tournament's first 24 hours of online video, which began airing March 14, more than 2 million users entered the site's "waiting room," where registered viewers are sent before they can begin watching games. In total, NCAA March Madness on Demand has already surpassed 1.2 million video streams served—and most of those viewers being exposed to the Discover Boating messages. "Response to the NCAA Tournament game webcasts has been great thus far, breaking Internet records for live streaming video views," said Blackwell. The Associated Press reported yesterday that the series, which often runs during work hours, is so popular that employers are estimating a productivity loss of US$3.2 billion for the month. Some employers are actually halting web feeds of the college tournament to their workplaces. The statement noted that the the Discover Boating campaign's online advertising schedule will eventually include paid placements on websites such as CBS.com, CNN.com, weatherchannel.com, Google, Yahoo and MSN, beginning the week of April 1. The two television spots, known as "Grocery" and "Wave," will also begin airing nationally the first week of April. The spots will run nearly 2,900 times on cable TV networks such as CNN, Fox Sports Network, TNT, USA Network, TBS, ABC Family, The Country Music Channel, The History Channel, Discovery Channel, Nickelodeon and several others. On April 1, TiVo subscribers will be able to see the Discover Boating TV ads and "click-to-request" a free copy of the "How to Get Started in Boating" DVD. Blackwell said the goal is to distribute 30,000 by September. The Discover Boating campaign gave away 11,000 last year. The print campaign includes four different ads that began appearing on newsstands in mid-March, in the April editions of magazines such as Time (April 10), Popular Science, Sports Illustrated (April 17), Field & Stream, Men's Journal, Outdoor Life and Family Fun. The Discover Boating ad runs prominently on pages two and three, including a one-third page informational ad as a gatefold, which addresses the top three consumer barriers to boating. Blackwell said that the campaign will wind down by the end of June. It is expected to generate more than 1.63 billion total impressions, 766 million of which fall directly into the Discover Boating target audience.
(24 March 2006)
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