Blackjack Creates “The Escape” Experience for Headline Sponsor’s Sponsorship of the Great Run Events.
The brief
The Blackjack Promotions team were briefed to bring a leading Covid-19 testing company’s headline sponsorship of the Great Run series of events to life. Our client wanted to emphasise that their suite of services helps people “Unlock Your World”, and our activation needed to work at 4 different events, each vastly different in terms of size and setting. The Blackjack team created “The Escape” – an interactive and compelling activation that could be adapted for each event, and which could be enjoyed by runners and spectators alike.
The Blackjack response
The Escape incorporated a green screen photo competition which allowed participants to be magically transported to their favourite holiday destinations. Each participant could win up to £2,500 of travel vouchers. A “pop-up beach” was created incorporating deckchairs, beach props and an international DJ playing music from around the world, all designed to draw attention to the activation and reinforce the client’s message. Our creative expertise allowed us to design the experience in full, from the initial CAD drawings all the way through to artworking, final production and installation. Our expertise with providing people for events meant we staffed The Escape with confident, knowledgeable, passionate promotional brand ambassadors.
Our favourite moment
For Rich Simkins, Blackjack’s Head of Creative Partnerships who led the project, it was definitely the emotion present at each event in both the runners and their supporters. The Escape became a place people could congregate at, calm their nerves before their race and then celebrate (and recover!) afterwards. The sheer goodwill at each event made the whole activation fun, collaborative and enjoyable.
The outcome
The Escape was visible to over 100,000 runners and 75,000 spectators, and even appeared in the BBC’s live coverage of one event. Approximately 8,000 people engaged with one of the four activations in some way, generating 500 competition entries enjoyed by over 1,500 people. The Great Run event organizers’ described The Escape as “the best sponsor’s activation in over a decade”.
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