Pizza... Coke Zero... Final Four Tickets?

Papa Johns and Coke Zero recently announced a paired promotion, offering consumers the chance to win a trip to the NCAA Final Four (tickets, hotel, airfare). To be eligible to win, fans just have to log onto www.papajohns.com/hoops or text "HOOPS" to 47272 (4PAPA). It's as easy as that. The chances of winning? Well, Papa Johns expects to sell 10 million pizzas during the first two (2) weeks of the tournament... So the odds may be a long shot.

What is unique about this promotion is the fact that Papa Johns paired with Coke Zero to becomes "The Official Delivery Pizza of NCAA March Madness". Both companies recognized the fact that eating pizza, drinking Coke (Zero), and watching basketball go hand-in-hand. Why not capitalize on this fact? Which leads to the question, do we do a good enough job trying to link up our corporate partners for simple promotions of this nature? I would think this especially applies to smaller properties, dealing with local vendors and mom-and-pop retail outlets.

A few additional facts about ordering pizza, in case you are ever selling a pizza chain an extended sponsorship come tournament time:

• Americans will eat more than 100 acres of pizza a day during March Madness (the equivalent to 926,000 basketball courts)
  • During this time, Americans will consume more than 13 million slices of pepperoni
• An average of 350 slices of pizza are eaten every second in the United States; the average American eats roughly 23 pounds of pizza per year
• 750,000+ consumers ordered their pizza through www.papajohns.com during the '07 March Madness tournament; of this total, more than 20,000 took advantage of the "plan ahead" ordering option