Gaming Marathon

Background

Samsung has over the last years been the main sponsor of the Tel Aviv Marathon – the country’s biggest sports event. The sponsorship’s objective was to strengthen the brand’s status and contribute back to the community. But due to the growing popularity of running as a sport, over the last years the number of marathon participants and also the number of brands sponsoring these events has dramatically increased. The result: Samsung was becoming just another of the 20 brand names backing the event and the value of its sponsorship was eroding and gradually becoming less effective, visible and impactful

Idea

 Turn this year’s marathon into a unique gaming experience for good and thereby propel the Samsung sponsorship and brand to forefront of consumers’ minds.

How? By creating a unique ecosystem that hacks standard marathon RFID timing technology based on stepping pads, to turn your run into a donation for good.

At the center of the ecosystem:

“S-Coins” = Samsung coins (RFID stepping pads we spread throughout the course) .

Each S-Coin= 0.25$ donation

The objective of the game: collect as many S-coins as possible spread over the running course. At the end of the run the sum you have accumulated in S-Coins will be donated in your name to the charity of your choice. The more coins you collect the bigger the impact of your individual run on giving back to the community and generating good for a great number of people.

Results

• 40000 runners from over 40 countries collected over 2 million S-Coins.
• Over 500.000$ were donated.
• 100% engagement – all runners collected S-Coins and de facto gave back to the community.
• 80% of runners shared the experience on their social network.  - For the first time ever, they boasted not only about their run time, but more importantly about how much money they donated.
• National and international press covered the event with special attention devoted to the innovative technology-based marathon gaming concept.
• As the positive chatter about the Samsung “Run.Play.Donate” Marathon gaming experience spread online via social feeds and the press, it became clear that this year’s sponsorship had done a lot more than provide the brand with valuable consumer facetime and exposure. It had provided runners with a unique, fun and meaningful experience and changed the sponsorship game all together.