The Challenge

Once a marquee fundraising property, the Komen 3-Day had experienced dramatic declines (~60%) in the number of new walkers in the 5 years prior to the team being assigned the business. High fixed costs associated with the event further magnified the financial impact of the decline. New walkers fueled repeat walkers – so this shift also had an amplification effect on the future state of the event. We were tasked with reinventing and relaunching a property that had been around for a long time and had finally grown stale in the midst of an increase in more experiential events.

The Opportunity

One thing we noticed was that the previous campaigns showed the celebration – and while this was meaningful to repeat walkers, we wondered if it was compelling enough to attract new walkers. For a new walker, there was no real context in which they could interpret the advertising and imagery.  The cultural cues associated with the event (i.e. pink tutus) did not translate well outside of that environment in a meaningful way.  One noteworthy example, the shoot salute – which was featured in a lot of the photography – didn’t make sense visually until we experienced it first-hand for ourselves.

So the team went to Detroit to see the event first-hand.  We spoke to walkers during the opening ceremony. We spoke to them during the first 10 miles.  We spoke to them at the first pit stop. We saw something special happening – and ended up walking 20 miles in “work clothes” to get a better understanding of why. We didn’t prepare. We didn’t train.  And we didn’t have any idea what we were getting ourselves into. But we walked. And we learned a lot along the way.

The Komen 3-Day was not really about pink tutus and parties. It’s the event for those who are so moved by a loved one’s breast cancer journey that they feel compelled to do something significant (challenging).

The Idea

This is the toughest, most challenging, most epic, heroic, impactful, monumental, blistering yet rewarding thing I can do.

The Work

The Results

The recommended campaign for the 2015 Komen 3-Day walk that significantly outperformed KPIs and industry benchmarks.

• Click-thru-rates that exceeded industry by 4X

• 20% higher dollar-for-dollar media efficiency

• 40% more total website sessions

• 50% more sessions from new users vs. previous

• 2X higher direct URL traffic vs. previous year

The Caveats

The Komen 3-Day Brand Relaunch was developed and managed by members of the team during their previous lives together. The original agency is cited below.

• Team members: Michelle Cheney/Marketing & Strategy, Julie Bowman/Copy, Susan Levine/Art & ECD

• Agency at the time: Slingshot