Wearing Your Heart For Your Club: Teams and leagues are often the center of community philanthropy. From Coat Drives to Charity nights, the ability for sports to drive awareness and dollars for cause marketing is pretty endless.
Now via Ogilvy Brazil, the football team Sport Club Recife has tied a promotion for its most loyal fans that literally will come from the heart. The new program is called “Immortal Fans,” and links supporters directly to an organ donation program for the club’s most loyal an organ donor card for the club that told fans it would ensure that his or her heart would keep beating for their team, even after their death.
Cards are downloaded via an app or received in the mail, and it was marketed via a campaign featuring real patients on transplant lists promising to make sure that they would keep the passion for the soccer club alive. Did it work? Organ donation by 54% and reduced the waiting list for heart and corneal transplants. Who needs blood drives?
Dunkin, Krispy Kreme Could Fill The National Doughnut Day Sports Hole: Friday is/was National Doughnut Day, a tradition not manufactured by manufactures but by the Salvation Army in 1938. In celebration, virtually every donut chain, especially the biggest ones, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin, are running promotions and giveaways extolling the value of the fried dough treat, at least for a day. Great idea, especially as cold and rain enveloped most of the Eastern seaboard.
Now Dunkin and KK, as well as Tim Horton’s, have very deep ties with teams and even leagues who are always looking for a little perk in arena. While many of the ties are promotional and usually start and end with coffee in the venue, would be cool to see a team or two take Donut Day to a new level. From batting weights to shutouts sports is full of ties to the little treat, so am upgrade in promo from brands already engaged wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, and could have a fun and buzz worthy upside.
Chevron, USGA Go Looking For Scientists: Chevron has been trying to find a way to engage more young Americans in the sciences, and their partnership with the U.S. Golf Association is becoming a big focal point. The company has had “STEM Zones” (science, technology, engineering, and math) grassroots venue for kids at U.S.G.A. events, video vignettes and ads, and academic STEM tools for teachers, but will now extend the partnership wider with the U.S. Open at Merion, Penn., starting on Monday.
In the program, kids watching a golf game talk about the science they see when others see a ball. This time kids are with their dads on the course; while the fathers talk technique, the kids are thinking science. There are also videos around science and golf on the Golf Channel integrated into game coverage. They are also on GolfChannel.com and at ChevronStemZone.com.
While some could say such a program may only reach kids interested in golf and their probably more affluent families, it is a good first step in helping fond a bridge from sport to education while addressing an issue with match and science in the States in a fun and engaging way that can cross over easily into other sports in the future.
We Need More Senior Moments…