COVID-19 continues to have a devastating impact on the entire world. And often times, we feel overwhelmed by the vastness of the impact. But hope and inspiration are born when we come together and focus on our local communities.
That is what we did in the Spring of 2020 with our client of 6 years, Boston Medical Center. They were, and continue to be, at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19 and were in desperate need of help. They needed to raise funds for relief support, so we came up with an appealing, fun, and scalable social movement to reach the Boston community and spread the word that BMC needed their support.
The renowned and beloved Boston Marathon had been cancelled for the first time in history due to COVID-19, so we thought that would be a great focal point for our Boston-based campaign. Since the runners wouldn’t be able to finish the race on April 20, 2020, we created a viral marathon instead – The Boston 1 Step Marathon.
On average, there are 55,374 steps in a marathon. So, leading up to April 20, people would come together to take one step at a time and help BMC finish the race against COVID-19. Our goal was to raise as many “steps” as possible to finish the #Boston1Step.
What was our method? Just three simple steps: 1) Film yourself taking one step. 2) Post your video on social channels and encourage others to do the same. 3) Make your $1 (or more) donation on the website.
Since we didn’t have a paid media budget, we had to get creative to make our movement viral. We relied on earned media by reaching out to Boston-based influencers and marathon advocates asking them to participate. We also reached out to each of our clients, agency friends, and our own social communities to join in the Boston 1 Step Marathon.
In under four weeks, we were able to achieve the following:
When it was all said and done, we were able to donate over $4,000 to Boston Medical Center for their fight against COVID-19.