April 4, 2012 | Volume 10, Issue 22

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Dear Faithful Readers,

As sports marketers, we know we can't rely on our team’s accomplishments on the field in order for us to be successful at our jobs. Just as quickly as our teams rise with success, they can fall into a decline. That being said, it is a huge mistake to not take advantage of our team's successes while they are occurring. During winning streaks is when our fans are most eager to engage with our product and we need to be ready and able to monetize on their excitement. But, how do we plan and execute a campaign for the yet unknown successes? Read today's feature and learn how the Buffalo Bills were able to execute an intricate marketing plan in order to capture increases in ticket sales and web traffic upon their free agent signing of Mario Williams.

Enjoy the Feature,

Joe Shapero
[email protected]

Buffalo Bills Capitalize on Mario Mania

The Buffalo Bills "strike while the iron is hot" and take advantage of fans increased willingness to talk

CONTACT

Advertisement

Marc Honan
SVP, Marketing and Broadcasting
Buffalo Bills
Phone: (716) 648-1800
Email: [email protected]

ORGANIZATION

Buffalo Bills

PROGRAM TITLE

Buffalo Bills "Welcome Mario"

OBJECTIVES

A successful season for any sports team is as much about playing well and having star players as it is ensuring strong sponsorships, appropriate promotions and rising ticket sales. It is critical for teams to be fully prepared to react to a sudden winning streak or the signing of a big name player. Without the appropriate preparations, teams are unable to capitalize on increased fan excitement and when the winning streak ends, so does the added willingness of fans to engage. Winning on the field or signing a big name player for fans to talk about, is the quickest way for teams to reignite a buzz around their brand.

The Buffalo Bills haven't seen the playoffs since 1999 and last season only sold out half the capacity of Ralph Wilson Stadium. Knowing they needed to re-ignite the waning passion of their fan base, the Bills set into the off-season with clear intentions of making a splash during free agency.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

To create a strong team on the field and a new conversation piece amongst their fan base, the Bills marketing and public relations teams chose several high profile potential free agents to focus their marketing and communications plans on during free agency. Without knowing which player they would sign, the Bills set up a potential plan for each instance. "We knew the key to capitalizing on the excitement of being able to attract a dynamic player would be communication and preparation. Before the signing we discussed and prepared a plan that would cover media relations, ticket sales, marketing and football," said Marc Honan, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Broadcasting for the Buffalo Bills.

On Tuesday, March 13, the Bills proved they would be big players in this year's free agency when they hosted the top defensive player available on the market, Mario Williams. Immediately, Bills fans everywhere had something to say and the team took action to capitalize on the swarm of questions coming from their fans. "Mario Williams is such a dynamic player and Bills fans are extremely informed on football. So when we hosted him, our fans wanted to be kept up to date as to what was going on. We kept them informed with text messages, tweets and Facebook posts." On March 15, the Bills signed Mario Williams and there was an immediate frenzy amongst Bills fans. The team took advantage of the increased enthusiasm by taking on an aggressive campaign to "Welcome Mario."

The campaign started on social media with a Facebook referral contest and tweeting competition for Twitter. The Facebook contest worked as a referral campaign where any fan who referred two friends to sign up for the contest was eligible to win a signed Mario Williams football. A second Mario Williams football was awarded to the fan that referred the most friends to enter the contest overall. For Twitter, the Bills held a reward contest where they sent out "Tweet #WelcomeMario to @BuffaloBills for a chance to win an autographed Mario Williams mini-helmet!"

The Bills email campaign started off with an exclusive message to current season ticket holders. The message announced the official signing of Mario Williams prior to the release of the information to the public. The next morning, season ticket holders also received an email with a personal video message from Mario (below).

An additional email was sent to the entire Bills database with exclusive Mario William's content, including a highlight film and content that linked to the Bills website. A few days later, the email was followed up with an exclusive one-on-one interview with Mario.

Meanwhile, the Bills had to extend their ticket office hours the weekend after the signing to handle the increased demand. "Our ticket office did a fantastic job of being prepared and communicating. They worked around the clock and we couldn't be happier!" says Honan.

The personal video message from Mario Williams to Buffalo Bills season ticket holders.

MEDIA

Once the signing became official, the team publicized the addition of Mario through the Bills' social media channels on Facebook and Twitter, emailed out to the team's season ticket holders as well as to the team's entire database, and made exclusive content available on their website.

PARTNERS

No partners were used for this program.

RESULTS

Signing Mario Williams has resulted in an overwhelmingly positive response from Bills fans everywhere. In the three days following the signing, the Bills sold 1,650 new season ticket packages and made 4,000 renewals. They had more than 3,700 fans enter the Facebook contest to win a Mario Williams football and have seen an increase of 3,200 Facebook fans and 4,000 Twitter followers since the start of free agency on March 13. On top of ticket sales and social media fans, the signing has impacted the Bills in various other ways. Once the buzz had died down, CEO Russ Brand commended his staff when stating, "We had the most traffic ever on our mobile app, we had over 1.2 million page views on buffalobills.com and we've had over 6,000 people sign up for the new Mario Williams Nike jersey when that comes out. So there's been a lot of excitement around the signing and it's great that in today's day and age that Bills fans all over can follow this and be a part of it."

Buffalo fans are ecstatic with the addition of Mario Williams.

LOOKING AHEAD

Although it is impossible to predict when their next big signing will occur, the Bills will no doubt learn from their planning and preparation of the Mario Williams signing and apply it to their next buzz-worthy news story.

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