<\/p>\n
Seeing orange? Dreaming of a UConn vs. Purdue or an Iowa vs. South Carolina rematch? You might have a case of \u201cbracketbrain.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the term ESPN and agency partner Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners (BSSP) came up with for an annual campaign promoting ESPN\u2019s March Madness brackets, called Tournament Challenge. Brackets have long been a mainstay for college basketball fans, and in recent years, ESPN has seen an increase in interest for both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s tournaments, which the company\u2019s marketing team aims to turn into engagement with its other offerings, according to Alex Healy-Lucciola, ESPN\u2019s senior director of brand marketing for fantasy and betting.<\/p>\n
\u201cTournament Challenge is a great way for us to bring people into our ecosystem and start to expose them not only to other fantasy games, but to our other products,\u201d Healy-Lucciola told Marketing Brew. \u201cThis is a great opportunity for us to bring a lot more folks into the ESPN digital ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n
When ESPN and BSSP started researching for this year\u2019s March Madness campaign, the team came across a commonly reported occurrence: The tournaments lead to a drop in worker productivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s glued to the screens,\u201d BSSP ECD Sinan Dagli said. \u201cThey\u2019re looking at their brackets\u2026and we started thinking, \u2018Maybe we need a name for this phenomenon.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The subsequent \u201cBracketbrain\u201d campaign follows a typical worker as he wakes up in March and sees \u201crounds, regions, and seeds\u201d everywhere he looks, like in the parking spaces outside his office building.<\/p>\n