Buffalo Bills' Toronto Series goes mobile

By Giselle Abramovich

June 6, 2008

Tackling a new medium

Interactive agency JHG will conduct a mobile campaign centered on the Buffalo Bills’ Bills Toronto Series.

The Bills Toronto Series starts Aug. 16 when rival NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, plays them in Toronto’s Rogers Centre. The mobile initiative will consist of text alerts, IVRs, text-to-win contests and a WAP site built around the event.

“We will be building a WAP site and will offer text alerts to engage fans,” said Elizabeth Estes-Cooper, chief strategy officer of JHG, San Diego. “We expect contests and IVRs with game celebrities as well to get people to interact with the event.”

JHG is an interactive, marketing and public relations agency.

The Bills Toronto Series encompasses eight NFL pre-season and regular-season games at Rogers Centre between the Bills and their NFL opponents over five years, as well as fan events in Toronto.

All hands on-deck

This initiative is collaboration between the Buffalo Bills, the NFL and Canada’s No. 1 wireless carrier, Rogers Communications.

“We are excited about this partnership with Rogers Communications,” Ms. Estes-Cooper said. “They are a legendary brand and a great company and this is a project that is in our sweet spot – sports, strategy, marketing and technology.

Mobile is not the only medium in this campaign.

JHG is crafting a complete interactive strategy with an online site, a social network initiative, blogs and a video platform.

Fans can go to http://www.billsintoronto.com for more information on the team, ticket information and registration and NFL sports updates.

“Not everyone will be attending the games and so another part of our strategy is to keep people who miss the event in-the-know,” Ms. Estes-Cooper said.

“Canada is pretty advanced in terms of the text message usage and the mobile aspect of this campaign takes advantage of the number of people that have phones and use them to text,” she said.

JHG will also do the mobile reporting for the campaign.

“Sports fans rarely go to a game without their mobile phone,” Ms. Estes-Cooper said. “You can’t not do mobile - it’s the way that people are engaging now."