CHALLENGE
We love a challenge here at BrainBox Intelligent Marketing. The Navy S.E.A.L.s came to us with one particular challenge they saw. Childhood obesity was becoming an increasingly serious problem in America. The S.E.A.L.s saw an opportunity to improve the fitness of all communities and expose more Americans to their work and their credo that “fitness is not an event, it’s a lifestyle.” We took this opportunity and ran with it.
OUR APPROACH
Like we said, we love a challenge here at BBIM. Previously, and around the same childhood obesity focus, we had worked with the Navy to develop and conduct the Navy Fitness Challenge, a program that physically tested over 70,000 high school students over a six year period. This hugely successful program to expose students to another level of fitness served as a jumping off point for our eventual work with the Navy S.E.A.L.s. But we wanted to add a little twist to the proceedings. We wanted to up the ante and connect the Challenge specifically with the Navy S.E.A.L.s, who, at the time, were a bit less well-known across the country than they are now.
SOLUTION
So we created the Navy S.E.A.L. Fitness Challenge. The Challenge consisted of nine regional events from 2006-2009 in Boston, San Antonio, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, Dallas, and Seattle. We designed and developed a website for the Navy S.E.A.L. Fitness Challenge that allowed for easy registration and employed digital and traditional media to promote the events. The Challenge was fashioned after the physical qualification test required to begin the the process of becoming a Navy S.E.A.L. Trust us, it wasn’t easy. The Navy S.E.A.L.s have a saying, “The only easy day was yesterday,” and this was never more true than the day of the Challenge.
We incentivized participants with different-colored t-shirts, the same colors the Navy S.E.A.L.s themselves use to denote advancement, with the pinnacle being the coveted Navy blue one. “Best of the Day” medals were provided to those who excelled. This all brought out the best in all the participants and fostered a competitive community around the Challenge throughout the day.
RESULT
The Navy S.E.A.L. Fitness Challenge was an unbelievably successful event, which attracted 4,000 participants and 10,000 spectators over the nine events. The Navy expanded the number of training classes for those seeking to wear the Trident and continued to promote fitness nationwide. As a marketing company, not much beats leaving a client with a sustainable and successful model moving forward that helped the client and did a little good in the world by enhancing the importance of physical fitness across the nation.