The New Orleans Bowl is a NCAA college football bowl game featuring the Sunbelt Conference Champion versus the third place team from the Mountain West Conference. The 2001 game was the inaugural year for the event. The initial advertising budget was $30,000- production and media buy, with a goal of attracting 30,000 fans to the game.

The result was a well attended event with over 28,000 fans- roughly $1.00 per response.

From the outset, challenges threatened game attendance. The conflicts included:

- A client who was producing the NFL’s Super Bowl XXXVI less than fifty days later;

- Competition for fans with a Sugar Bowl featuring local favorite Louisiana State University less than two weeks afterwards;

- The events of September 11th and increased travel safety concerns;

- A national economic recession.

Facing these challenges of an inaugural event, we formulated a plan that relied heavily on radio, TV and a local public relations campaign. The ads focused on creating "event appeal", not on football. Ultimately, a clever concept, good copy and a talented young actor helped generate sufficient fan interest to attract 28,000 attendees and the third highest share every produced for a NCAA Football Bowl game televised on ESPN2.

As a follow-up, the New Orleans Bowl promoters are presently entertaining proposals from numerous other conferences that are bidding for the guest team’s spot in the game.

To us, that spells success.