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Summary.
The Ask: Popeyes wants to hack TikTok during March Madness.
Insight: 64 teams show up to each March Madness Tournament. 63 teams and their fans are going home sad.
Opportunity: Position Popeyes as the wings for the other 63 and help fans through their March Sadness.
BC Sprint / 2024 Winner
March Madness
Navigating March Madness is chaos. Every brand is shouting for attention, and they all take a similar approach. They want to approach their target audience of fans, as fans of March Madness themselves.
Because Popeyes is not a sponsor of the tournament, we were asked to find a way to capitalize on the madness on TikTok without using any NCAA branded content.
The Noise
When we looked at the typical March Madness campaign, the overwhelming optimism stood out. When we thought about our own experiences with March Madness optimism is the last word I’d use. So we started to think about the average college basketball fan’s experience…
We Discovered:
In any sport, when fans experience their team losing it directly impacts their mental health. This phenomenon is referred to as ‘sports fan depression’. Studies in European soccer show that when teams lose a significant game, local worker productivity decreases until the next big game.
So…
Compared to the wider context of American sports, there is more heartbreak involved in March Madness than any other sporting event. 15 teams lose in the NBA playoffs, 13 lose in the NFL. With this in mind, we decided to go in the opposite direction as most brands. Instead of focusing on the 1 team that wins, we focused on the 63 that won’t.
The 5 Sauces of Grief
Using Popeyes’ 5 flavors of wings, we created the “5 Sauces of Grief” A TikTok campaign that will help fans navigate their March Sadness at every stage of the Tournament.
We knew, unlike Popeyes’ competitors, we couldn’t use NCAA branded content so we created a social media campaign that specifically asks Popeyes’ fans to be the face of the campaign. We created interactive TikTok challenges that would let college basketball fans showcase just how much their team means to them.
Timing
Instead of a dedicated media plan, we decided to play into the chaotic and unpredictable nature of March Madness. We based content release around conditional statements. Allowing us to specifically target college fans exactly when their team loses, and personalize the approach depending on how the loss occurs.
