Knock ALS Out of the Park
The ALS Association
Issue 53 | December 2019
Agency
BBDO New York
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Worldwide: David Lubars Chief Creative Officer New York: Greg Hahn Senior Creative Directors: Tom Kraemer, Jens Waernes Creative Director: Mike Boulia Senior Art Director: Shayne Alexander Creative: Peter Alsante Designers: Ting Peng, Lucas Crespo
Production Team
Interactive Executive Producer: Katie Young Interactive Producer: Chava Quinn Front End Engineer: Nick Russo Backend Engineer: Alex Massicott QA Manager: Jimmy McGee UX Designer: Clara SantaMaria Vargas Executive Producer: Rob Marmor Production Company: BBDO Studios
Other Credits
Global Account Director of Operations: Linda Epifano Account Executive: Abigail Solano Brand Strategist: Dexter Blumenthal Media: OMG (Outdoor Media Group)
Date
September 2019
Background
The deadly disease ALS and Major League Baseball first became linked in 1939, when Yankees legend Lou Gehrig delivered his famous “Luckiest Man” speech to announce his sudden retirement due to Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS.
Sadly, 80 years later, there is still no cure.
Idea
The task was to raise awareness of the condition. The germ of the idea came from the simple fact that baseball batters want to hit home runs, or “Knock it out of the park”, while the ALS Association wants to “Knock ALS out of the park” too.
The “Knock ALS Out of The Park” campaign idea was a play on the printed numbers found on outfield walls of baseball stadiums used to designate the distance from home plate.
Billboards and in-store posters resembling the outfield wall at Target Field, home of the Minnesota Twins, were placed around the neighbourhood of the stadium as well as across the city. The signs were both tongue-in-cheek targets for Twins batters to aim for and a sobering reminder to all of the need to send this disease into oblivion.
In addition to the billboards, T-shirts were given away at the stadium. Each shirt featured the precise foot measurement from the fan’s seat to home plate.
Online, fans were encouraged to try the Home Run Selfie Generator at www.
donateALS.org. They simply snapped a picture and, using geo-location technology, their precise distance from home plate at Target Field popped up. The Generator featured a clever donation mechanism wherein your suggested contribution matched your distance. So, if you were 9,374 feet from home plate, you were provided with the choice of giving: $9.37, $93.74 or $937.40. On the last day of the regular season, the Twins just happened to set the all-time record for the most home runs in one season: 307. A coincidence? Or a hopeful sign that the days are numbered for this disease?
Results
This campaign was designed to run in Minneapolis but has been expanded to several other cities for the 2020 season.
It garnered 47.1 million impressions thanks to donated out-of-home media from partners including OMD North America, the Minnesota Twins, and local businesses like the iconic nightclub First Avenue and Thomson Reuters.
Our Thoughts
What I love about this simple idea is that it works as well online as it does in the physical world. So you can sit at the ground and be 415 feet from the plate or you can be in Kent, UK, and 21.34 million feet away and donate in dollars a tenth, a hundredth, a thousandth or even a millionth of the distance.
While this issue of the magazine is dedicated to the memory of Paul Silburn (see pages 2-3) this page is dedicated to Ray Barrett, who died of motor neurone disease, alias ALS, in September 2015 aged 57.