Heartburn and the NFL: A perfect match for sports marketing

Now in its second year the heartburn drug, Prilosec OTC, has teamed up with the NFL for an online promotion called “NFL Season of a Lifetime,” according to a blog post from Pat Coyle.

This promotion allows one lucky fan to win a chance to go to NFL games every week during the season. This has allowed the brand to make a "deeper, richer connection,” with customers, according to Steve Steinbrunner, Interactive Marketing Manager for Prilosec OTC. Prilosec has also made several deals with NFL clubs to do some promotion but has yet to release what that will be.

This is forward thinking on the part of Prilosec OTC because it has stepped outside the original guidelines of marketing a drug and forged a different path to reach its target market. Other marketers should keep sports in mind when wanting to appeal to an audience.

Use of widgets in Sports Marketing

Most sports fans love sports because it lets them be a part of a team. When making a connection, most fans log onto their team’s Web site, and they can take a piece of the team through the use of online widgets.

From a marketing standpoint, even sports teams are a brand that needs to be sold. Widgets are a great marketing tool that can take many different forms from buttons to videos to slides.

Colts.com created a widget that scrolls through that latest action of a Colts game, according to a Pat Coyle blog post. Users can take this widget from the original site and move it to other sites. Widgets also act as data collectors, so marketers can review where the widget moved and how many people used it. The current widget on Colts.com has been posted on 1,600 sites and viewed more than 100,000 times, according to an article by Pat Coyle.

These widgets are producing results. Marketers love to see these numbers and users love to see the creativeness that Web sites produce. So the next time something on your Web site (or the site itself) needs to be branded think easy, effective marketing—think widgets.