Google, Bing, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and pre­sum­ably actress and Wild­cat fan Ash­ley Judd pre­dict Ken­tucky will emerge vic­to­ri­ous in the 2015 NCAA Divi­sion I Men’s Bas­ket­ball Cham­pi­onship on April 6. No such prog­nos­ti­ca­tions, how­ev­er, have been made for the flur­ry of bas­ket­ball-themed mar­ket­ing con­tent that has emerged to cap­ture fans’ atten­tion. That is, until now.

Unlike the Divi­sion I Women’s Bas­ket­ball Cham­pi­onship, which also plays out in March, the men’s tour­na­ment is big busi­ness. To wit: Per Think with Google, 30 per­cent of Amer­i­cans – or an esti­mat­ed 90 mil­lion peo­ple – filled out March Mad­ness brack­ets in 2014.

What’s more, media mon­i­tor­ing and mar­ket­ing firm Kan­tar Media calls the annu­al event “one of the largest and most valu­able prop­er­ties in all of tele­vi­sion sports,” gen­er­at­ing  $7.5 bil­lion in nation­al TV ad expen­di­tures from 279 mar­keters from 2005 to 2014 with adver­tis­ers spend­ing about $1.13 bil­lion last year alone.

So, in the spir­it of what could right­ful­ly be called March Mar­ket­ing Mad­ness, Momen­tol­ogy has cre­at­ed its own brand­ed brack­et-style show­down with four regions of themed con­tent:

1. Trick Shots
2. Brack­ets and Pre­dic­tion Tools
3. Ana­lysts
4. Memes

We’ve looked at which brands have cre­at­ed con­tent in each region and pit­ted their cam­paigns against each oth­er to deter­mine which mar­ket­ing teams deserve a cut of March Mar­ket­ing Mad­ness glo­ry.

And like the roar of the prover­bial crowd, there’s cer­tain­ly lots of noise for these brands to cut through en route.

After a num­ber of ear­ly upsets, mul­ti­ple brands attempt­ed to go real-time-ish by riff­ing off of bust­ed brack­ets. That includes Patron Tequi­la, Tur­b­o­Tax, LG Elec­tron­ics, and even the Buf­fa­lo Bills.

And then there’s all the con­tent that sim­ply falls into a gen­er­al bas­ket­ball-themed buck­et (hoop?):

• Can­dy brand Reese’s has asked fans to pick their top five can­dies for their “start­ing line­up”.
• Hotels.com’s @CaptainObvious has been tweet­ing gen­er­al com­men­tary.
• DiGiorno Piz­za has gone philo­soph­i­cal.
• Buf­fa­lo Wild Wings is shar­ing facts with #Wing­Wis­dom.
• Insur­ance brand Nation­wide has revived Invis­i­ble Mindy in a bas­ket­ball-themed spot.
• Beer brand Shin­er has plead­ed alle­giance to under­dogs.
• Men’s care brand Degree Men is tweet­ing about so-called #GameChang­er moments while also ask­ing fans to sub­mit pho­tos of videos demon­strat­ing their own fan­dom.
• Super­mar­ket chain and Big 10 spon­sor Mei­jer has also tweet­ed about con­fer­ence-spe­cif­ic fan­dom.

As cam­paigns go, these are our low­er seeds. What fol­lows is where most of the real mar­ket­ing action lies.

Momentology’s March Brandness Bracket

Region 1: Trick Shots

Pota­to chip brand Pringles is ask­ing fans to get a back­board from retail­er Wal­mart (or to down­load one from its Fla­vor Slam web­site), cre­ate a trick shot video and share it on Face­book, Insta­gram, Twit­ter, or YouTube with the hash­tag #Fla­vorSlam. And to per­haps pro­vide inspi­ra­tion, the brand has part­nered with sports/comedy troupe Dude Per­fect, whose Ping Pong Trick Shots 2 video has 4.2 mil­lion views as of March 21.

Per Top­sy, how­ev­er, the hash­tag #Fla­vorSlam has only been used about 300 times in the past month.

Cam­era brand GoPro, too, has post­ed its own trick shot video, which it is push­ing on Twit­ter.

Amer­i­can auto man­u­fac­tur­er Buick is also using trick shot videos, but ask­ing con­sumers to choose their favorites in a brack­et-style show­down – the apt­ly named Buick Brack­et Show­down.

With 16 videos from play­ers like Trick Shot Titus, Jam­broz, and Dunk­ing Dev­ils, Buick asks con­sumers, “Which trick shots shat­ter your expec­ta­tions?”

Win­ner: Buick. The brand has har­nessed not one but two March Mad­ness themes in an inter­ac­tive cam­paign that dove­tails nice­ly with its “That’s expec­ta­tion shat­ter­ing. That’s the new Buick”-tagline.

But Buick is cer­tain­ly not the only brand to put its own spin on the infa­mous tour­na­ment brack­et.

Region 2: Brackets and Prediction Tools

Soft­ware and web ser­vices firm Adobe is ask­ing fans to cast votes on the most frus­trat­ing paper process­es in its #Form­Rage Brack­et, which includes the Legal­i­ty, Work­place, Appli­ca­tions and Fam­i­ly Affairs Regions and match-ups like fill­ing out tax returns ver­sus pass­port appli­ca­tions, as well as health his­to­ries ver­sus driver’s license renew­al forms.

Indeed, like Momen­tol­ogy itself, many brands are jump­ing on the brack­et band­wag­on this year:

• News net­work CNN is ask­ing fans to face off against their favorite anchors in the CNN March Mad­ness Brack­et Chal­lenge.
• The NFL is ask­ing fans to vote on NFL games in its Great­est Game of All Time brack­et.
• The Pitts­burgh Steel­ers are track­ing which play­ers’ and coach­es’ alma maters are still alive in its own Steel­ers-themed brack­et.
• The Oak­land Raiders are ask­ing fans to vote on the Great­est Play in Raiders’ His­to­ry while also push­ing the hash­tag #Sil­verand­Black­Mad­ness.
• The NHL also used its own brack­et to tell the world which sport it thinks reigns supreme.

Mean­while, Bing cre­at­ed a March Mad­ness Brack­et Builder tool, which it says helps fans make smart selec­tions. So, too, did men’s groom­ing brand Dove Men+Care, which worked with sports media com­pa­ny Bleach­er Report to help fans make brack­et selec­tions using dig­i­tal Instabrack­ets in an effort for Nation­al Brack­et Day.

Dove Men+Care is also cel­e­brat­ing “Real Strength Moments” through­out the tour­na­ment by launch­ing a new spot that it says “high­lights moments of father­hood and friend­ship that tru­ly enrich men’s lives…and con­trast with the stereo­typ­i­cal, phys­i­cal depic­tions of strength that often pop­u­late the media land­scape, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the throes of a com­pet­i­tive sports sea­son.”

In addi­tion, the brand has part­nered with for­mer NBA star Alon­zo Mourn­ing to share “per­son­al moments that have defined who he is as a man” on DoveMenCare.com, Face­book, Twit­ter, and Insta­gram. Dove Men+Care also ask­ing fans to share what #Real­Strength means to them and says the @MarchMadness Twit­ter han­dle will be tweet­ing “both his­tor­i­cal and real-time moments of #Real­Strength rel­e­vant to the NCAA March Mad­ness tour­na­ment.”

Win­ner: Dove Men+Care. The men’s groom­ing brand has extend­ed mes­sag­ing from the Super Bowl in a rel­e­vant and com­pre­hen­sive way. Although we also give props to Adobe for cre­ativ­i­ty in its March Mad­ness-themed push for its Doc­u­ment Cloud.

Region 3: Analysts

Insur­ance com­pa­ny All­state is also get­ting in on the pre­dic­tions rack­et, pit­ting ESPN col­lege bas­ket­ball ana­lyst Dick Vitale against weath­er prog­nos­ti­cat­ing ground­hog Punx­sutawney Phil in the All­state March May­hem Chal­lenge. In addi­tion, All­state has also launched a May­hem Brack­et Pre­dic­tor Tool, which allows users to pair any two teams in the tour­na­ment to see the win prob­a­bil­i­ty for each school. The site also pro­vides NCAA-themed this-day-in-his­to­ry facts and a chart with sta­tis­ti­cal data on the like­li­hood of each team win­ning the whole enchi­la­da.

The May­hem Brack­et Pre­dic­tor also notes that sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, con­sumers have a bet­ter chance of “[becom­ing] a pro ath­lete, [get­ting] struck by light­ning AND [dis­cov­er­ing] your child is a cer­ti­fied genius” than pick­ing the per­fect brack­et.

Dur­ing pre­vi­ous All­state March May­hem Chal­lenge events, the release notes Vitale has “nar­row­ly edged out a vic­to­ry” against the Geor­gia Aquar­i­um’s sports-pre­dict­ing dol­phins and Joel, the Fort Worth Herd’s 1,795-pound long­horn.

And speak­ing of beef, Vitale is also work­ing with jerky brand Ober­to in a bas­ket­ball-themed spot in the brand’s “Lit­tle Voice in the Stom­ach” series. Ober­to is also ask­ing con­sumers to upload their best Vitale impres­sions for a chance to meet him in per­son.

Anoth­er ESPN ana­lyst, Jay Bilas, has teamed up with quick ser­vice chain Wendy’s in a series of so-called “Bila­s­o­phy” videos meant to also push the brand’s spon­sor­ship of the John R. Wood­en Award, which is pre­sent­ed annu­al­ly to the out­stand­ing men’s and wom­en’s col­le­giate bas­ket­ball play­ers of the year, and to remind con­sumers to vote at WoodenAwardVote.com.

Bila­s­o­phy videos cov­er top­ics like team­work, moti­va­tion, geom­e­try, spon­sor­ship, and lega­cy.

Win­ner: All­state. Who doesn’t like pit­ting Vitale against sooth­say­ing ani­mals?

Region 4: Memes

In Acu­ra’s March Meme­ness cam­paign, the brand is pump­ing out real-time memes “brought to you by the quick-to-react ILX,” the brand’s sports sedan mod­el. March Meme­ness memes include bas­ket­ball ter­mi­nol­o­gy like Nice Bas­ket and Trav­el­ing, as well as the hash­tag #March­Meme­ness, which, per Top­sy, has been used 20 times in the last 30 days.

Per a YouTube video with a com­pi­la­tion of Acura’s memes, con­sumers can watch the memes live start­ing March 20 on ESPN.com. The brand has report­ed­ly cre­at­ed 103 memes as of March 21. The con­tent is share­able on Pin­ter­est, Twit­ter, Face­book, and Google+.

And then there’s AT&T, which is also rolling out GIFs with bas­ket­ball stars Shaquille O’Neil and Chris­t­ian Laet­tner, as well as a Tour­ney Tips video.

Win­ner: Acu­ra. March Meme­ness is real-time, rel­e­vant, and has a nice tie back to the “quick-to-react ILX.”

Which March Mad­ness cam­paign do you think will res­onate the most with col­lege bas­ket­ball fans?