St. Louis was selected to host the NCAA Women's Final Four
Basketball Tournament in 2001 -- an exciting event for a city full
of avid sports fans. When, tickets for the event sold out months in
advance, a committee of locally-based communications professionals
(assembled to conduct PR for the NCAA events) knew the lack of
ticket availability could become a negative story in the media.
The team met to brainstorm a solution to the challenge, and
"March to the Arch" was born. The concept: 2,001 people would
dribble basketballs from the Savvis Center, where the tournament
was to be held, to the St. Louis Arch on Saturday, March 31, the
day between the semi-finals and the final game. The event had a
number of objectives: to raise awareness of St. Louis, to position
sponsors as involved in their communities, to raise awareness of
women's sports in general.
But the primary thrust was a major local media relations
campaign designed to generate positive coverage and get St.
Louisans involved in the tournament even if they couldn't
attend.
Bouncing for Buzz
The committee, including key communicators from MasterCard, the
primary sponsor of the event, as well as organizations ranging from
Fleishman-Hillard to the Savvis Center's, began compiling a list of
local media to contact about the event. "Pitching this event was a
full-time job itself," says Amanda Gioia, director of PR for
MasterCard. The committee was staffed by about six core volunteers
and 20 supplemental personnel. Although each member of the team had
his or her own real full-time job, the advantage was that their
diverse backgrounds included a much broader pool of media
relationships than any one PR department might have brought to the
table.
Their media tactics:
- The promotional committee established a partnership with a
local radio station, Y-98, to increase awareness. The morning-drive
host served as emcee for the event, gaining visibility for the
station and giving the event repeated mentions to hundreds of
thousands of listeners every day for weeks. - Pitches to local media made it clear that this would be a
significant event for the local outlets to cover. Team members
positioned the March to the Arch as good for St. Louis -- whether
for the city in its efforts to garner attention as a sporting
venue, or for the thousands of citizens the team expected to come
out to participate in the fun. - The event organizers decided they could get even more coverage
by approaching the Guinness Book of World Records to attempt a
record for most people dribbling basketballs at one time -- an
offbeat media hook. - The team used the fact that the event was great for women's
sports and delivered the message to reporters that even if St.
Louisans couldn't attend an actual Final Four game, they could be
very closely involved in the festivities and in their city by
participating in the March. - The committee designed the event itself to be
attention-grabbing and a great visual -- thousands of St. Louis
citizens dribbling basketballs as they walked to toward the St.
Louis Arch was an event made for broadcast footage. - MasterCard leveraged that visual appeal to tout its sponsorship
-- the MasterCard logo was everywhere, from T-shirts distributed to
participants, to racing numbers, to the letterhead used for pitches
and other mailings.
Results
The PR committee would consider the event a success if they
could get at least 2,001 St. Louisans out to dribble and there was
widespread local, as well as national, media coverage. MasterCard
team members in particular wanted the company's logo featured
prominently in that coverage.
On the day of the March, registration was set to begin at 11
a.m. with a starting time of 1 p.m. Participants began lining up to
register at 6:30 a.m. All told, more than 2,600 people registered
for the event.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch listed it as one of the top 10
events in St. Louis sports "fandom" history. More than 50 local and
national outlets covered the March to the Arch, including a variety
of local talk shows, ESPN2 and Fox Sports Midwest. And the
MasterCard logo couldn't help but pop up in the many media visuals
of the event.
Plus, the campaign met the overall goal of diverting media and
consumer attention from what could have been a more negative story
about the Tournament and focusing it on a positive story about St.
Louis.
Campaign Stats
Budget: The team used $20,000 from the Local Organizing
Committee's overall $100,000 PR budget for basketballs, T-shirts
and hats for volunteers, flyers, city and street permits,
walkie-talkies, Port-a-Potty rental, a band to lead the march and
other costs associated. PR services were provided on a volunteer
basis.
Most of that overall budget was not being used and "significant"
funds were left over after the March to the Arch.
Challenges
The challenge of the campaign was to turn the local media's and
community's focus from a lack of tournament tickets to something
positive. By creating a quirky, fun event and positioning it as
perfectly suited for the high-spirited, sports-loving St. Louis
community, the team was able to avert any potential media
backlash.
Another challenge: working with the Guinness book. In the end,
although we can't imagine many events that would have topped 2,600
in numbers of people simultaneously dribbling basketballs, Gioia
says she wasn't able to get the record. "Unfortunately," Gioia
says, "we never heard back from them. I followed up a number of
times to see if they needed more information but didn't receive a
response."
Contact: Gioia, [email protected]