Hockey’s place in Canadian culture is more than a simple sporting pastime – it’s a unifying force that brings people together. Unfortunately, one in three Canadian families can’t afford to enroll their children in organized sports, including hockey, which means many kids are missing out.
To help young Canadians continue to enjoy the game, Jumpstart and the Hockey Canada Foundation (HCF) partnered to launch “The Big Play” – a new program, announced on Dec. 22, 2014, to help give more Canadian kids the opportunity to play minor hockey.
Jumpstart is dedicated to removing the financial barriers that keep children from participating in organized sport, while the HCF’s mission is to promote and foster accessibility to the game of hockey. The partnership was a natural fit.
Based on the need and opportunity identified, the campaign objectives were created to assist “The Big Play” in reaching the program goal, while achieving national attention for the campaign. The objectives were to raise awareness of the importance of hockey for Canadian youth as a skill that helps build teamwork, leadership and athletic skills, and to utilize the campaign hashtag, #BigPlay, as a tool to generate social awareness.
Through “The Big Play,” Jumpstart and the HCF committed to help bring 30,000 kids into minor hockey over the next three years. The new program helps Canadian children ages four through 18 from financially disadvantaged families participate in hockey by assisting with the costs associated with registration and equipment. Tapping into each organization’s local resources allowed Jumpstart and the HCF to promote the program and reach key demographics across the country.
Jumpstart and the HCF wanted to launch this initiative in a big way by connecting the program to one of the biggest junior hockey events in the world – the World Junior Championship. Of even greater significance was the fact that this year, not only was the Canadian team destined to do well, but the tournament would be played on home soil. This provided the perfect opportunity to capitalize on an audience that would connect to the message.
Leveraging the buzz and excitement leading up to the tournament, Jumpstart and the HCF announced the launch of “The Big Play” with newly appointed Jumpstart ambassador and Canadian World Junior team member, Connor McDavid. Media were invited to a press conference on Dec. 22 at McGill’s McConnell Arena in Montreal. At launch, Jumpstart kids in attendance were surprised with tickets to the Team Canada game on Dec. 26. A national public service announcement that focused on “The Big Play” aired on this day as well, highlighting the program with a call-to-action for families to go online to learn about the program.
To complement the public service announcement, Canadian Tire added additional support. Using the key insight that consumer attention is divided amongst many screens – and social media plays a key component with live events and sports – the idea came to life. Leveraging its relationship with TSN, Canadian Tire and its agencies worked with Twitter to develop an amplify program that would capitalize on live content. Fans from across Canada saw “big plays” from every game of the tournament on TSN’s @TSNHockey Twitter feed with tweets using #BigPlay. For each retweet of TSN’s #BigPlay videos, Canadian Tire donated 25 cents to “The Big Play” to get kids into the game.
“The Big Play” was the most successful marketing campaign in Jumpstart’s history as it propelled its brand awareness for the period to a record high of 95%. #BigPlay became synonymous with the World Juniors on Twitter with more than 91,000 retweets and $45,657 raised. Videos on Twitter were viewed more than 600,000 times. Fan engagement on social media exceeded industry norms (7.2% engagement versus the 4.1% norm on Twitter and 3.4% engagement versus 2% norm on Facebook). Jumpstart also saw a 30% increase in traffic to its website. In addition, the launch of “The Big Play” generated media stories across Canada, resulting in 11,894,041 million impressions.