Sometimes it’s the littlest twist that gets you the biggest bang, and if it involves free food and college students, the ROI goes up even more. Whether it is a team giving away Free Chili for a milestone like 120 points in an NBA game, or free Dunkin Donuts for a home run barrage, or on a bigger scale Taco Bell’s free tacos for stolen bases in the World Series, the free food is me idea seems to always be a hit.
So there we were Thursday night at the Prudential Center in Newark as one of the largest non-Big East game crowds in the building’s history turned out to see perennial power Michigan State meet the rising in the ranks Seton Hall University Pirates. Big crowds and big games should showcase big opportunities for some smart brands right?
Well the Hall and one of its restaurant partners, BGR Burger, found a great one. BGR, a national chain that stands for “Burgers Grilled Right,” is a relative newcomer to the crowded elite fast food market in the New York area, now with two places in New Jersey, one in South Orange right near the Seton Hall campus, and the other in Bloomfield, kind of equidistant to both the Pru in Newark, and SHU (they also have one now in Yonkers across the river as well). Their burgers are billed as quality, they are moderately priced, and they have gotten good reviews.
So how do you give added value and drive some buzz with college kids? Create a promo that can deliver amazing ROI and foot traffic. The answer came Thursday night, the FIRST TIME BGR and SHU rolled it out and it played off of not what Seton Hall did on the court, but what their opponents couldn’t do. “Bricks For Burgers” was born.
If in the last eight minutes of a game, a visiting player missed two free throws in a row, anyone with a ticket in the next 24 hours gets a free BGR Burger. The goal was to obviously get more awareness and traffic into the BGR locations, especially the one near campus, but it was also to get the Pirates student section even more fired up at a crucial point in the game, and Thursday night was a big test for Kevin Willard’s nationally ranked team. The visiting players are shooting at that point looking at the burger loving student section, so the impetus for some added yelling, and shaking burger signs to distract, is even more valuable than if you just had a rooting interest for your own school.
So in a see saw game, MSU’s Malik Hall went to the line for two shots. And with 3:39 remaining in the game, the first attempt bounded away…and the second went around the rum and came…out.
Hysteria reigned, and the building got louder than it was all night.
Now of course there can’t be an all too perfect ending, it is gritty Newark and this is sports in New York after all, so unabashed success isn’t always in the offing. The Pirates let a five point lead slip away in the final minutes and the Spartans escaped with a 76 to 73 win, but a fun promotion was born, one that drew attention, excitement and had a tangible result for anyone in the building with a rooting interest or and a jones for a burger on a cool Friday in New Jersey.
So other than buzz what was the result? We checked in with Seton Hall’s Andrew Stein to see if people would cash in the tickets. As of just before noon…so that is breakfast time, over 140 tickets were cashed, and the restaurant was expecting at least 500 to claim their burger off of Hall’s miss. That was just for their one location. They also had several dozen cash in at their Bloomfield spot, which had never happened with ANY promotion before.
By comparison, last year Stein said they ran a promotion that if the Pirates won; fans would get 50% off a menu item of their choice the next day. The result on a good day was maybe 40 people redeeming something.
Big win BGR, big buzz and brand awareness and value add for Seton Hall, and even with the loss a great night of brand building for the school and the Big East.
The promotion should continue, and with the Hall’s biggest home non-conference test in the can, and given the issue with free throw shooting in hoops this year, more burgers should be had. BGR fire up the grill, and others take note.
A very cool promo was hatched in Newark.
