If you were lucky enough to visit this year’s 2015 Final Four Championship in Indianapolis, then you may have found yourself jamming out to Zac Brown Band at White River State Park, dining on some stellar oysters at The Oceanaire Seafood Room, or enjoying one of the greatest men’s college basketball championship games in recent history at Lucas Oil Stadium. But one thing is certain: if you attended Fan Fest at the Indiana Convention Center, you saw some of the most intriguing brands bring their A-Games to the experiential space.
Fan Fest is, after all, a celebration of a beloved collegiate competition with a dizzying throughput over the course of three days, and we at Helios were fortunate enough to work with LG and their agency Advantage this year. We added a digital cornhole/soccer touch table and a socially shareable ‘Moment In Time’ photo array to their many other basketball-themed activations. AT&T also had no lack of digital within their considerably-sized space inclusive of a hologram and trivia game.
And man, were there hoops. Many, many, many basketball hoops in every direction. There was good reason for this, not the least of which being the logic that if you can fit a basketball court into your Fan Fest footprint – well, you’d be hard-pressed not to do so. Buick, of course, had their ever-impressive array of new vehicles surrounding larger-than-life hoop bracket setup. In addition, Capital One seemed to host every physical sport imaginable to the delight of many fans within its monstrous footprint, and I was given the chance to realize how truly unskilled I am at both lacrosse and wiffle ball.
Attendees young and old were enthralled, and as a digital marketer and consumer, I am always excited to see the confluence of brand presence and interactive storytelling. However, I believe next year will (and should) see even more digital interactive ingenuity, which I imagine would also lead to increased brand insight across a list of brands that any interactive agency would chomp at the bit to assist.