Winner: Tata Consultancy Services - TCS Amsterdam Marathon: Calling all Superheroes
Tata Consultancy Services has been the main sponsor to the Amsterdam Marathon (TAM) for the past five years, and it has been a highly successful partnership that has seen the event experience extraordinary growth.
In 2014, TCS elected to help identify a clear brand identity for the Amsterdam Marathon that would underpin a coherent communications strategy to drive greater levels of community and social media engagement.
The campaign would put the runners center stage using social media to source inspirational ‘superhero’ stories that could then be shared socially and also form the kernel for PR and owned media such as out-of-home and print advertising stories.
Through pre-event PR and print ads, TCS encouraged runners to use the hashtag #TCSsuperheroes to share their training photos and reasons for running. An online gallery was used to pull in all the great visual content produced by the runners. TCS then reached out to some of the most socially active runners with an invitation to participate more directly in the campaign. TCS also contacted selected clients, doctors at VUmc (the official charity) and elite athletes, requesting their participation in the marathon, an outreach which was met with an overwhelmingly positive response.
The campaign achieved fantastic results within a very short period, exceeding KPIs for objectives including reach and attitude (sentiment and participation/engagement). The increased performance of marketing activity was observed in benefits to the marathon, VUmc, and to TCS itself. In terms of driving brand awareness advocacy and warmth for the Amsterdam Marathon Reach (organic), that effort resulted in 15,062,276 impressions (based on the use of #TCSsuperheroes & #TCAM14) – equivalent to over 90% of the Netherlands population. This was the highest level of organic reach ever for TAM.
Honorable Mentions:
• Eastwick Communications - Unify Flipboard
• Jackson State University - JSU Uptown Funk Marketing Video