Our favourite campaign around this year’s MLB World Series wasn’t a sweeping piece of sponsor activation, or even powerful property owner promotion, or even a player-led ambush initiative, but rather a neighbour-created cause campaign revolving around a six-year-old Kansas City Royals fan battling cancer.
This inspiring viral campaign sent the young Kansas fan to see Game 2 of the World Series (and his team’s win over the mighty San Francisco Giants added to the emotional story).
Since April, committed Royals fan Noah Wilson has been enduring chemotherapy, radiation treatment and surgery at Children’s’ Mercy Hospital as he fights an unusual form of cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma.
Noah’s dad Scott posted a video on Facebook of his son in hospital reciting the Royals line-up for their crunch playoff match as the team successfully fought through to the World Series for the first time in 29 years.
This film inspired neighbour and family friend Ryan Zimmerman to launch a viral campaign to get Noah to the World Series via GoFundMe.
Zimmerman tweeted the campaign, shared it across Facebook groups (including a ‘Team Noah’ page) and the campaign went viral across multiple social channels as Noah’s story touched thousands.
Donations poured in to Zimmerman’s GoFundMe page – totalling more than $11,000.
It also attracted the attention of MLB EVP (and former Yankee manager) Joe Torre invited the Wilson family to be his personal guests at Game 2 of the World Series.
The MLB also gave the Wilson family care packages and invited them to a gala at the stadium.
Ticket-buying site StubHub also donated an additional seven free tickets that were given to other sick children.
The Royals’ 7-2 win was ‘icing on the cake’ according to Noah dad.
The initial money raised by the GoFundMe page was used to help bring other families of kids with cancer to the game so that they can make some memories too.
Comment
It’s not just the property owners and their global corporate sponsors – like the MLB’s own Game 3 ‘Advancing the fight against cancer’ initiative –
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/99412976/mlb-pauses-during-game-3-to-stand-up-to-cancer
who can launch mass, cause-led campaigns.
Social channels have enabled consumer-created and crowd-sourced fundraising initiatives to reach targets and motivate people in ways that were unheard of just a few years ago.
Links
GoFundMe
http://www.gofundme.com/fwmj28
MLB
Stubhub
