The Client

The Prostate Cancer Foundation

The Challenge

The Prostate Cancer Foundation wanted to engage women and younger male demographic.

The Solution

We created Athletes For A Cure from the brand to the execution starting from a blank page. The Prostate Cancer Foundation founder Michael Milken decided he wanted the Prostate Cancer Foundation to broaden their demographic through sports fundraising.

First, we created a stand alone brand with the support of the Prostate Cancer Foundation marketing and communications staff. Next, we laid out a strategy the would focus on the current statistic that one in six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. The phrase was; “One In Six. One In A Million.” Then we featured some of the worlds top endurance athletes in a series of ads that ran in national publications and online.

At the time we created this program Twitter was in its infancy, and Facebook was not considered a legitimate platform for traditional marketing. Despite some resistance from the board of directors, we created a Twitter following that won us a “Shorty,” award which is the equivalent of an Oscar in social media.

At one point we even partnered with ultra distance runner Dean Karnazes as he made an attempt to break the worlds record for running 24 hours on a treadmill. This particular treadmill happened to be perched on an office building balcony four stories above Times Square. That caught everyone's attention.

Within one year Athletes For A Cure was named by CNN, The New York Times, and NBC as the most effective first year fundraising campaign in the history of the nonprofit segment.

As much as we would wish we had a claim to prescience, it was sheer luck that both the mens and women's winners of the Ironman® Triathlon World Championship in the first year had both were won wearing the Athletes For A Cure logo on their uniforms as their personal cause.

To learn more visit: www.athletesforacure.org