Last August, a very strange event took place in downtown Toronto. To the average spectator, it looked a lot like a live version of such popular reality shows as Survivor, Fear Factor and The Amazing Race. Contestants were eating bugs, and solving puzzles. There was an old-fashioned dunk tank.
In fact, there were about 240 people, in pairs of two, taking part in the test-run of a new event called the City Chase. There wasn’t a lot of publicity, so spectators could be forgiven for not quite knowing what was happening.
Not surprisingly, however, marketers were up to speed. The event had four sponsors coming out of the gate, including Coca Cola’s Five Alive, Wrigley’s Extra chewing gum, Bell Mobility and The Running Room.
Nick Jelinek, president of Toronto-based InField Marketing, is just about the only one who can explain the whole thing. He starts like this:
‘We and our clients are always looking for the next opportunity for what I call mobile marketing. Everybody else is doing more and more of that as well so eventually it becomes a bit of clutter at the grassroots level.
‘Our insight was that we can develop a property, own the thing, and then say, who wants to do grassroots marketing this season? We have an alternative, and an alternative where we don’t need to pay event fees. It’s our baby.’
It is indeed. And Jelinek had no problem coming up with the perfect kind of event. Incessant water cooler talk about the latest reality shows was a good indicator for a trend that had most definitely captured public attention: extreme physical challenges that just about anybody could try.
The concept, then, is part scavenger hunt and part relay race, where teams fan out across the city to find various clues leading them to 15 ‘chase points.’ The first team to obtain passport stamps from 10 chase points wins.
Marketer response for last summer’s test run was another clue that the idea was a hit. Out of five calls to potential corporate sponsors, four immediately said yes. The fifth was Ford Canada, which signed on for the season once the test run proved a success.
InField is now preparing to go national, starting on May 15 in Vancouver and moving eastward through Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City and Halifax. A national showdown of regional winners will take place at an unidentified location, to be announced two days before the event. Wrigley Canada will fly in one ‘Extra’ team, through a sweepstakes open to all participants.
The combination of endurance and silly stunts was a perfect fit for Wrigley Canada, says director of marketing Richard Parkinson. ‘That really communicates the efforts behind the Extra brand in its long-lasting direction. Our tagline is, ‘It’s the gum that won’t give up.”
Extra also came in useful for contestants who had just eaten a plate of crickets.
Sponsorship of the event isn’t cheap. Title sponsorship and presenting sponsorship are ‘six-figure investments,’ Jelinek says. Local sponsors and supplier sponsors are roughly $10,000 to $25,000. The reach might be worth it. Jelinek estimates that the street activity will reach one million consumers through live interactions and impressions during the races.
Jelinek divides those impressions into four tiers. Level one is the super high-level intercept. It’s low quantity but high quality. An example is the challenge for one chase point: to identify what animal is holding the Five Alive can in the abandoned mural on Queen St. West. (It’s a squirrel.)
Another example is a bit included for Bell Mobility last year. At one chase point, participants were instructed to phone ‘#CHASE’ on a Bell Mobility phone to get instructions on how to win that challenge. The catch is that the number wouldn’t work on any other phone, and the result was hysterical teams, wearing Bell-tagged bibs, running through the streets looking for someone who would loan them a Bell phone. Not only that – they had to tell people offering other kinds of cellphones that theirs weren’t good enough.
Passersby offering up Bell Mobility phones are Jelinek’s example of tier two reach. The intercept is less focused, but it’s still memorable. Part of Ford Canada’s exposure fits in here. The company will donate branded vehicles that will roam the streets during the event offering helpful rides to participants lucky enough to wave one down.
Level three for brand exposure is a paid media campaign advertising the events. The advertising isn’t really necessary. Last year’s test event attracted 220 teams – far exceeding the goal of 50 – despite an entry fee of $150 per team. This summer’s events are already 20% sold out with no advertising at all. Sponsors, however, need a way to make sure their name is linked to the buzz. Jelinek is planning a print, radio and local newspaper campaign in April, primarily with Sun Media.
Finally, Jelinek expects some serious publicity, and he’s hoping to land a major broadcasting deal by 2006.
For now, Bell Canada has confirmed a multi-year deal for title sponsorship and is in the midst of preparing numerous activation ideas that will grow the event exponentially over the next three years.
‘The City Chase is such a great fit for Bell as a sponsorship property,’ says Steve Marshman, Toronto-based director of corporate sponsorship for Bell Canada. ‘We like to think that Bell technology will effectively ‘enable’ the City Chase – connecting Canadians to a vibrant new movement in the world of event marketing.’
Jelinek concedes that the event is not for everybody. ‘We’re not going to an ultra conservative bank and saying, ‘Hey, do you want to support an event where people are eating live crickets?’ But we are going to Five Alive and saying, ‘Hey, how about sitting in front of a dunk tank on the corner of Yonge and Eglinton and talking to them about feeling alive?”
