Quicken Loans Masters the Shake ‘n’ Bake Move of this Year’s March Madness Tourney

While you may not have a shot at the billion dollar bracket, Quicken Loans is getting a steal 

You have probably have heard a little something about March Madness. With Selection Sunday in full swing, the countdown to the tipoff is officially here. If you aren’t hustling to fill out your NCAA bracket, perhaps a little incentive from our friends at Quicken Loans, with the help of a man named Warren Buffet, can entice you to take a stab at some picks this year. They announced a contest earlier this year that will award anyone submitting a perfect bracket for this year’s NCAA March Madness tournament $1 billion dollars. That’s right, ONE BILLION dollars.

So what’s the catch? Well, there technically isn’t one. Unless of course you consider that the odds of anyone achieving a perfect bracket are one in 9,000,000,000,000,000,000 (bet you didn’t know what nine quintillion looked like!) To be fair, the top twenty scoring brackets, imperfect as they may be, will earn participants $100k each. And entry is free. This seems quite generous, considering official sponsors of the event, like Capitol One, are boasting at $1,500 giveaway to a lucky fan via a Twitter contest (#NotSoLuckyAfterall).

Let’s do some math here. Odds are overwhelmingly in favor of Quicken (aka Warren Buffet) keeping their (his) $1B, but they’ve basically committed a total $2 million for the “runners up” prizes. Seems like a small cost for the flurry of media attention that this contest has raised, and they tournament hasn’t even started yet. But it seems like an even smaller cost considering that a 30-second commercial spot in the championship game is going for $1.5 million.

Call me crazy, but there have got to be some marketers out there just kicking themselves! Quicken/Buffet have a pretty foolproof solution, and they’ve already reaped way more ink and airtime than any 30-second spot or logo placement can compete with. Not only is there a huge awareness component to this tactic, but people have to give personal data to Quicken, including email addresses and information about upcoming home purchases and current interest rates. This is valuable information for Quicken’s marketing team.

I’m most curious how some of the top-tier sponsors of the NCAA are feeling about all this. AT&T, Coca-Cola and Capitol One are all “official” NCAA sponsors, and March Madness is a major part of that sponsorship package. I can’t help but wonder how they feel about Quicken’s swift move, a shake ’n’ bake, in basketball terms for sure. It’s pretty genius, but is it “fair” to these sponsors who have made a major investment in the NCAA? While their contracts likely protect them from other brands encroaching on marketing activity at the physical events, should there be any protection from high-profile campaigns that simply overshadow their own efforts?  Or is that just the name of the game?

– Lorena Crowley