The Challenge

The Cal (University of California at Berkeley) football team was kicking off their season against New Mexico State. While expectations were great for the season and excitement was high, Bay Area sports fans are a notoriously fickle bunch. New Mexico State was not a marquee name and had limited drawing power. Yet the size of the crowd at the opener would set the tone for the rest of the season.

The Solution

In addition to the significant advertising and promotion the athletic marketing department was doing themselves, they decided to supplement their efforts by bringing on Tager Group. After our initial discussions we focused on a number of strategies:

• Drive a guerilla and viral marketing campaign directly to the youth community. The draw was “Come to College Day”, an opportunity for youth organizations to attend for free and experience a university atmosphere. We contacted over 300 youth organizations, distributed flyers and spread the word.
• Create “Armed Forces Day” and use the same guerilla and viral efforts to target the Armed Forces. We organized activities before the game with the service branches to help them promote themselves but also to create an event with appeal for their community. Almost 2,500 tickets were requested by various active, reserve, and veteran service branches.
• Promote the group sales offering to cities and counties throughout the Bay Area.
• Establish the “True Blue Crew”, a volunteer group created to help use community volunteers to further supplement the marketing and promotion efforts around the football program.

Results

Cal drew the biggest home opening crowd in their history with almost 60,000 attending the game. While this was the result of significant advertising and promotional efforts on their part plus the success of the team, we’re proud that our efforts helped push them over the record.