A Little Story About a Pair of Purple Babsocks…

Early in the year I sat down with my clients and now friends Tom and Jake, co-owners of Babsocks.  We chatted about creating an interactive campaign with TSN 1050 around Bell Let’s Talk Day on January 25th.  The reason for this conversation was because Babsocks was creating a new exclusive purple Babsocks all in support of CAMH.  The best part of this initiative was Babsocks was donating 100% of proceeds from the purple Babsocks to CAMH.  This was in line with our Bell Let’s Talk initiative so synergy between brands was already established.

Babsocks were already sponsoring the 3 Stars of the Day feature on OverDrive so their brand was integrated within programming.  So, we decided to customize a campaign that would have Babsocks dominate three mediums; radio, digital and social.  We also managed to include television, but we’ll get to that soon.

The Babsocks campaign started the day before Bell Let’s Talk Day with every show on TSN 1050 talking about the exclusive purple Babsocks supporting CAMH.  We created a new 15 second spot exclusively for the purple Babsocks which aired twice in every commercial break.  Michael Landsberg, who is heavily involved with Bell Let’s Talk, was happy to provide his voice for the new 15 second spot.  Tom and Jake were thrilled to have Michael Landsberg involved since he’s such an activist for mental health.  In preparation for Bell Let’s Talk Day, I delivered purple Babsocks to our entire TSN 1050 team so we can support our friends the next day.  I even gave purple Babsocks to on air TSN personalities and TSN management.  Everyone was ready to look sharp for Bell Let’s Talk Day.

On January 25th, Bell Let’s Talk Day, Babsocks did a page takeover of the TSN 1050 main page.  Our site looked incredible covered in purple with the Babsocks and CAMH logos.  We then had Babsocks takeover our Twitter account.  This was new for TSN 1050 but it worked seamlessly between the two brands.  For every Tweet from the official @TSN1050RADIO account, we included @Babsocks and #BellLetsTalk.  The purpose of this was to not only generate awareness of the purple Babsocks and CAMH, but for Bell to donate 5 cents to mental health for every Tweet using #BellLetsTalk.  Throughout the day every show on TSN 1050 posted pictures of them wearing their purple Babsocks.  TSN personalities like Kate Beirness posted a picture of her sporting purple Babsocks through Instagram.  Even the legendary CHUM FM morning show, Roger & Marilyn, talked about the purple Babsocks on air after I delivered a fresh pair that morning.  The live mentions weren’t complete without the mighty Joe Bowen talking about purple Babsocks during the Leafs vs Red Wings game that night.  The amount of support we received by every team member at Bell Media was incredible.      

As the day progressed TSN 1050 Radio and TSN personalities included @Babsocks in 62 tweets which resulted in 2.2 million impressions.  The @Babsocks Twitter account was just as active with 114 tweets or retweets.  We had discussed in advance that both brands need to be heavily active through social media on Bell Let’s Talk Day and communicate one unified message about supporting mental health.  I think this was accomplished. 

We headed into the final stretch when Tom and Jake joined Hayes, Noodles and the O’Dog for an interview on OverDrive.  This interview was especially important because it gave Tom and Jake a platform to elaborate on their support for CAMH and their relationship with the polarizing Toronto Maple Leafs coach, Mike Babcock.  Not to mention, this portion of OverDrive was televised nationally on TSN4 during the 6pm hour, so this was the television exposure I mentioned earlier.  Tom and Jake did a fantastic job on air and even got the honour of selecting the 3 Stars of the Day.  CAMH was the first star of the day, while Michael Landsberg was a close second star. The third star was kindly given to their Account Executive, Casey Shanks.  That was pretty cool, I can’t lie.

All in all the day was pretty remarkable.  As good as the $6,585,250.50 Bell donated on Bell Let’s Talk Day, it was the $11,500 raised in one day by my client, and now friends, that was special for me.

Go Babs Go!