Top 6 French Open online contest ideas for Grand Slam marketing
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The Grand Slams are technically of equal importance, but everyone has their favourites, and after Wimbledon, for a lot of people, the French Open might be the second most prominent.
Yes, the US Open and the Aussie Open have their heritage, and from a geographical point of view, their importance elevates depending on where you’re based, but Roland Garros has a few major boons which are undeniable:
- The red clay is beautiful and dramatic, and makes matches resemble gladiator battles
- The crowds are utterly ruthless and never afraid to pick a side, which love it or hate it, adds a certain atmosphere
- The surface slows down play, to make for a more aesthetically pleasing form of tennis to watch with longer rallies and more breaks of swerve (nobody’s acing their way through the first half of the draw in Paris)
Regardless, if it’s not the second most important Grand Slam, it is a Grand Slam. So whether you’re directly involved with the French Open, or not officially linked at all, there’s a good chance segments of your target audience will be tuning in to watch, making it a great occasion upon which to piggy back your marketing.
And sports fans love to play as well as watch, so here are our top gamification and online contest ideas to boost your French Open marketing campaigns!
1. Clay Court Crusher (Match 3)
Set your backdrop to honour the beautiful red clay of Roland Garros, and customise a match three game to your branding and your campaign.
Mix tennis balls, rackets, and your own brand’s icons and visuals to take the places of the gems, set your leaderboard, and engage your audience in a branded contest! You can run a prize draw with your top 20 to motivate participants, and include a call to action button (CTA) to send finishers to your strategic pages (like product pages).
As much branded messaging as your campaign requires: With Drimify games, you can include intermediate screens before and after your experience, so there’s plenty of real estate to promote your products and support your broader marketing campaign.
What brands does this work for? If your audience is interested in the French Open and they like fun mobile games like Bejewelled Blitz and Candy Crush Sage (most people seem to), this is a great marketing game for your brand. The in-game jewels or candies give you ample opportunity to tailor the visuals to your brand and campaign beyond the usual options like the logo, fonts, and buttons, etc.
2. Roland Garros Roulette (Slot Machine)
Instant win games are easy to understand and an irresistible invitation to audiences to engage with your business.
Customise your slot game to your branding while paying homage to the French Open.
Drive sales: Let’s say you’ve got one big, French Open-themed prize, like tickets, or some kind of merchandise bundle, or the official watch or camera sponsoring the tournament – this could be the grand prize, but you could set your game so every other participant receives a promo code to provide the extra incentive to make a purchase, particularly if they’ve watched a compelling promo video on an intermediate screen following the game.
3. Slam Chaser: Beat the Big Three (Pacman)
Customise the Pacman game engine so your customers can play as your mascot clad in tennis gear. They’re trying to collect as many gold coins (or trophies) as possible while being pursued by the ghosts of Novak, Roger, and Rapha.
You customise the superpower item to be your product, and this gives your player the strength to overpower the big three.
Please note: We would have made it a big four and added Andy, but the game engine features three ghosts, not four.
Most of them have retired: But we’ll be talking about their era for decades to come as they’ve redefined what a rivalry in the sport can be.
4. Chatrier’s Challenge (Quiz)
Challenge your audience to a French Open-themed quiz!
This is an ideal one to appeal to big tennis fans, and you can tailor your question formats in a variety of ways to maximise your experience’s appeal. You could:
- Use videos in your questions and ask your audience what happened next
- Create odd one out rounds where participants need to identify the option that doesn’t belong, then you can elaborate on which one’s odd in an intermediate content screen (for example, the odd one out could be the only player to never win a French Open title)
- Either use images to illustrate your questions or your answers (or both, but this can be too busy visually)
Examples of brands this works for: Sporting goods stores, particularly if they’re tennis or racket sport specialists, sports bar chains, sporting and tennis publications, channels providing coverage of the tennis.
5. Call It! (Survey)
In this game, you’re customising a survey and asking your audience questions about the upcoming French Open tournament.
Who do they think will win the Musketeers’ trophy? The Suzanne-Lenglen cup? To which round or stage of finals will your nation’s number one make it to?
This is a great way to generate statistics for your own content marketing around the French Open, so this is a winning option for any brand that has to generate a lot of content or needs to regularly engage with their audience on sporting matters.
Think TV channels, online sports publications, newspapers, and other media platforms, etc.
6. Fifth Set Superstar (Dynamic Path™)
If you’re looking to engage your audience over a longer period of time, you could look to use an experience builder like the Dynamic Path™.
You could deliver a series of five games, either in the build up to the tournament or over the course of the tournament, hitting your audience with a mix of instant win games and point-scoring games designed to connect them to your brand through their interest in the French Open.
Because Grand Slams are two week long tournaments, often with significant levels of hype in the build up, the repeat engagement strategy is ideal.
You could even create a digital calendar with a game or a piece of content opening up on every day of the tournament – participants would fill in their details the first time they play, then could get back in with just a single piece of information to be defined by you, such as their email or a username.
Enable the leaderboard: The Dynamic Path™ leaderboard aggregates participants’ scores across the experience, so some players will be hyper motivated to be at the top, or at least on the first page of the leaderboard, meanwhile you can use instant win games as regular incentives to keep playing for those who are scored out of the running early.
Expert advice
Events like the French Open unite audiences in following a common narrative – even people who normally don’t care for tennis can get caught up in the scale and the significance of a Grand Slam. Therefore it presents a great commercial opportunity, whether you’re the French Open marketing team, an official partner brand, or just happen to have some sports fans among your customers.
The marketing game concepts listed here are just starting points for creating your own online contests with a French Open theme.
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