Even a longtime NCAA sponsor like Great Clips has to adapt when the College Football Playoff—which it signed on to sponsor last year—goes through massive changes. The playoff ended the four-team format it used from 2014 through 2023 and embraced a 12-team structure with four first-round matchups, six quarterfinal and semifinal games hosted by the New Year’s Six bowls (Fiesta, Sugar, Rose, Cotton, Peach, and Orange), and the championship game—pushing Great Clips into a more extensive campaign featuring announcer Jesse Palmer and college players on name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals.
In a crowded field of bowl competitors, brands and bowls that stay nimble and weird avoid watching their competitors race by from the sidelines and taking a tough loss.
“Brands want to tell a story. They want to do more than just slap their name and logo onto the event. They want to create content around it,” Lynch said. “That’s pushed the bowl operators to get more creative, and once you started to see some of these activations take place—like the mayo being dumped on people—this stuff’s going viral, and it’s really interesting and differentiates us. Ask, ‘How can a brand make us more relevant and tell a story around the bowl?’”
Defending the title
Since the Frosted Strawberry Pop-Tarts mascot met its toasty demise at last year’s Pop-Tarts Bowl, its kin has appeared on the red carpet with Jerry Seinfeld at the premiere of Netflix’s Pop-Tart biopic, Unfrosted; Pop-Tarts has become an in-demand Halloween costume; and the pastries are emerging in greater numbers for this year’s bowl.
Kellanova announced earlier this year that Frosted Wild Berry and Frost Hot Fudge Sundae mascots would appear at the next Pop-Tarts Bowl, but they kept teasing a “mystery flavor” until revealing Frosted Cinnamon Roll’s identity on Today in early December. The slow reveal—and the eventual fan vote for the Pop-Tarts Bowl’s inevitably toasted mascot MVP—maintained steady interest among social media and entertainment press alike.
“Whether you’re a fan of football or not, the edible mascots will spark conversations, meme-worthy moments, and interactive engagement,” said Heidi Ray, Kellanova’s senior director of brand marketing for Pop-Tarts. “It’s an inclusive, high-energy experience that brings fans into the heart of the action.”
