Buffalo Wild Wings recently used former, well known collegiate basketball players for an Instagram stories push that aimed to shame fans for not watching March Madness college basketball games. The campaign was targeted so that fans of specific schools would get the message from one of these former players while their school’s game was on TV. The goal was to personalize the message for fans of these schools while games were on to increase the brand’s engagement with college basketball fans. The chain as also posting steadily to social media with video clips, re-tweets from customers, and polls to urge viewers to have fun watching games at its bars rather than isolating themselves at home. It is too early to tell whether this multichannel effort around March Madness would help viewership, but CBS Sports and Turner Sports reported that ratings were increased 8% during the first week of the tournament compared to last year.
This is a case of Buffalo Wild Wings really understanding their audience, primarily male sports fans. Wings are a facet of viewing parties and they are positioning themselves as the bridge between those two things: sports fans and viewing parties. All people feel a sense of a pride with the university they graduated from and this feeling is only increased during March Madness. With Jack in the Box being heavily invested in professional sports teams, this can be a great idea for Jack to use as a platform to connect with our college audience as well. Perhaps, JIB can also use certain moments (maybe not the scale of March Madness) to determine a CTA to get a group of people to visit the nearest JIB location. For example, maybe after a music festival/concert, we can utilize artists to urge their fans to hit up Jack in the Box for a great late night meal on their way home.
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