Samsung is the official sponsor of the Tel Aviv Marathon* - Israel’s biggest sports event of the year. But due to the growing popularity of marathon events and brands sponsoring them, their value has eroded and become less effective. Our objective was to make Samsung’s sponsorship highly visible, The idea: The “Samsung Calories Marathon”: RUN. BURN. DONATE & FEED

People who run marathons do it mainly for themselves. They live to brag about their accomplishments and tell the whole world how well they did (medal, ranking, time). But what if we could transform people’s self-centered motivation into an altruistic one?

Samsung decided to do just that: Run the marathon, burn calories and Samsung will donate on your behalf a package of food equal to the calories you burned to people in need.

Samsung launched its campaign with a commercial that called for sports fans to partake in the Marathon and burn calories to feed the needy. While the press echoed our call, to amplify our effort, “Samsung Calorie Treadmills” were setup in shopping malls where people could run and add their burnt calories to the general ‘calorie count’. An added data-layer and activity that allowed people to donate their calories once, twice or more. An element that not only kept runners motivated but added to the competitiveness of the event.

On the day of the marathon, runners’ number bibs were outfitted with a calorie-counting chip. Special counters along the marathon route showed the total calorie-count burned live, encouraging runners to burn even more.

Smartbooths placed at the end of the marathon, allowed runners to extract the data of their number bib and put together a food package in a dedicated nearby area.

§  On the day of the Marathon 40,000 runners showed up

§  and burned 29,730,783 calories

§  the equivalent of 5000 Passover holiday food packages

§  Ensuring many poor people will have a festive meal this Passover.

 

The Samsung Calories Marathon effectively reinvented the sponsorship format by adding a layer of ‘doing good’ onto the event and creating a new advertising avenue and more entertaining consumer experience.