Tostitos Connect to Home Bowl
Best Use of Public Relations in a Promotion Campaign
Agency: The Marketing Arm & Ketchum
Campaign: Tostitos Connect to Home Bowl
Client: Tostitos/Frito-Lay
Tostitos had a unique opportunity to leverage two upcoming college football title sponsorships – the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and the Tostitos BCS National Championship. As two national games, the brand wanted to make the biggest impact possible and generate high national and regional visibility around both the Tostitos brand and the USO organization. It also wanted to promote consumer engagement across social networking channels to build a base of support for future marketing programs.
On December 21, Tostitos, the USO, and 11 former college football greats such as Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas, Antonio Freeman and coaches Bobby Bowden and Gene Stallings came together to give our troops at Joint Base Balad in Iraq the fun and camaraderie of a college football bowl, called the “Tostitos Connect to Home Bowl” (CTHB). Special events included autograph sessions, a pep rally, tailgate party and a star-studded flag football game.
At the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, a video of the event aired during the ESPN halftime broadcast. Ten days later at the Tostitos BCS National Championship Game, an even bigger event was planned. During a live on-field halftime ceremony broadcast by ESPN, Tostitos surprised some of the families of troops by reuniting them with their loved ones who were serving overseas and who played in the Tostitos CTHB game.
Facebook served as the home page, providing celebrity player bios, troop bios, pictures and videos of the experience. Media outreach blanketed both local and national news outlets, including B-roll, live satellite interviews, localized outreach for military personnel and family members, satellite media tours with celebrity greats, radio tours, an ongoing stream of content, such as Flip camera video footage shared with AOLFanhouse.com, celebrity and military player videos for Yahoo!Sports, Twitter and blogs.
The Tostitos CTHB resulted in nearly 5,000 stories, including The New York Times and the Huffington Post. There were 300-plus broadcast mentions, including multiple CNN stories and a live interview with Jim Kelly from Iraq. ESPN Sports Center featured the reunions on Christmas Day.
During launch week, more than 45 TV, radio and print interviews were completed, including national interviews on the Weather Channel’s “Wake up with Al Roker” and FOX News. Nearly all of the coverage (98%) included Tostitos-desired messaging. Consumer participation in Total media generated more than 1.3 billion impressions, while Tostitos’ social networking program surpassed brand projections.
