Allstate Insurance is pairing college football rivalries with its well-known Mayhem campaign to ignite a battle on Twitter that will see the losing teaming get shredded in a live stream.

The insurance brand is targeting college students, hoping to take the popularity of the Mayhem character with the demographic one step further by incorporating college football, social media and live-streams. Fans are taking to Twitter prior to Dec. 5?s game to share which team they want to see shredded with curated hashtags by Allstate. 

?In terms of engaging an audience around sports, Twitter is the place for brands to be,? said James McNally, senior manager of business development at Prolific Interactive, Brooklyn, NY. ?It is far and away the best platform for fans, pundits, players, teams and brands to engage each other around real-time events.  

?Making Twitter campaigns effective can be tricky for brands, but Allstate is primed for success, presumably the brand will use its considerable muscle to drive campaign awareness, plus people get to help feed a car into a giant shredder, what is not to like,? he said. ?Twitter has struggled with engagement and promotion offerings for brands, but its real strength is owning real-time.  

?For a generation that's grown up blocking or skipping ads, Twitter has a real-time engagement potential that other channels lack. For a sports-related campaign, brands would be hard pressed to do better than Twitter. ?

As college football becomes more intertwined with brands for sponsorships and marketing, Allstate is the latest to leverage the sport for appealing to college fans and students. The Mayhem Tweet Off campaign is prompting fans to band together on Twitter and vote for their rival team to lose through hashtags #ShredAlabama or #ShredFlorida. 

Prior to the SEC championship game, the Mayhem character will shred items related to the losing team on a live Ustream on the @Mayhem Twitter account. The loser is determined by the amount of tweets for its hashtag. For instance Alabama fans will be sharing posts with the hashtag #ShredFlorida. 

The continuation of the campaign got users riled up for past games such as Georgia vs. Auburn, Arizona vs. Arizona State, Florida State vs. Florida and UGA vs. Georgia Tech. 

The past contests were concluded with a short video of something symbolic of the losing teams being destroyed by Allstate?s Mayhem character. For the SEC championship the event will happen live before the game, causing more hype and excitement. 

Not only are users tuning in to see the outcome but many consumers are also interested in destruction footage. It is excited to see the various items be destroyed in different ways, and taps into the frenzy surrounding the games. 

Nissan also targeted college football enthusiasts with the DieHard Fan app, enabling users to superimpose face paint onto selfies while pairing a popular fan activity with face-scanning technology (see more). 

Similarly, Goodyear sponsored this year?s College Football Fan Index from USA Today, helping the brand get in front of consumers who are increasingly accessing sports news from their smartphones (see more). 

?Sports is one of the only content types that ensures people will be engaged at a specific time, and it is a content type that people associate with passion, excitement, and loyalty,? Mr. McNally said. ?Those are very powerful factors that Allstate or any brand can leverage, and by tying in a novelty shredder game that pits each team's fans against one another, All State is giving people a fun way to engage with their favorite team, other fans, and the brand. 

?This puts All State in the inner circle, i.e. it is giving people a cool experience they can engage with, and building that type of relationship with an audience is really the best thing a brand can hope for,? he said.