Taking a Tradition and Making It Our Own
As March rolls around and college basketball gears up for one of the biggest spectacles the sports world has to offer, offices around the country get ready to participate in their own way. Whether you have an office pool based on who’ll make it to the final four, or each employee fills out their own bracket entirely, participation in March Madness is as ubiquitous in the corporate world as fantasy football is during the fall.
Here at Signature Coins, our decision on what to do for March Madness was less about ways to make our office more fun (which would be pretty difficult to begin with) and more about ways to create something fun and memorable for our customers and social media audience. It was from this impulse that the 2019 National Challenge Coin Association (NCCA) Tournament was born.
Many Coins Enter, Only One Coin Leaves Victorious
For the NCCA Tournament, we decided to take the concept of the March Madness bracket and repurpose it for challenge coins. Some of our most faithful customers submitted images of their favorite coins from past orders to us via social media.
Once all of the entries were collected, we organized them into a bracket and prepared for the carnage. The coins are being pitted against one another in a series of single-elimination Facebook polls. The fate of each coin is in the hands of our social media audience, and the fans and followers of the customers whose coins are entered into the contest. For the best chance at success, each customer has to promote their coin’s polls to their own individual social media audience and hope they can rack up more votes than their opponent.
With a March Madness bracket, you fill in your choices and hope to be right. The best part about the NCCA Tournament is that you actually have the ability to change the outcome. By voting for the coin you want to win, by sharing the polls and enticing others to vote along with you, you’ll have a direct effect on who wins.
But the scheming participation doesn’t end with simply voting for, and convincing others to vote for, the coins you want to win. The nature of the bracket system is such that you’re actually capable of seeing your preferred coin’s entire path to victory. By paying attention to the other coins in your coin’s bracket, you can also vote for the coins you think your coin is most likely to beat in future polls. The entire contest really is in your hands.
Taking an Office Tradition and Turning It Into a Business Plan
Events like the Olympics, the World Cup and March Madness often disrupt office productivity. With the Olympics and World Cup, at least the events only come once every four years. But every March, the eyes of the nation turn towards one of the most exciting and unpredictable spectacles in existence. This includes a large number of eyes in offices across the country. Employees sneaking off to the breakroom to catch their preferred games, or surreptitiously checking scores in meetings is a common sight during the tournament.Each company has to come up with specific ways to combat or otherwise deal with these moments. While a lot of places choose to turn a blind eye to these activities, we thought why not take the idea and run with it. By taking a chance and embracing something that could very well be a distraction, we hope to harness its power for good.
For most companies, repurposing March Madness takes the shape of creating fun team building activities amongst interested employees. Office pools and accommodations to watch games are great, but they’re also insular decisions that only affect the people within your office. What if you turned your attention outwards and got your customers and fans involved as well?
Our 2019 NCCA Tournament is the idea we had to accomplish exactly that. Is there some special and unique way you can engage your audience during this year’s March Madness tournament? Whatever fun activity you decide, we hope you’ll keep an eye on our posts for the next month and have fun with us as we see which coin will reign supreme and which customer will walk away with an order of 100 free coins.
