Special Olympics is an organisation that provides sports training and competition for people with intellectual disabilities. They strongly believe in social inclusion through unified sports.

To accomplish this, Special Olympics receives funds by private partners. They don’t get any governmental support and don’t work with membership fees. That’s why it’s crucial for them to get new partners and funds.

So, Special Olympics asked us to find new leads and get potential sponsors to commit to a long-term partnership.

Athletes work hard. Every single day, they suffer and go all the way to get the best out of themselves. And that's no different for athletes with a mental disability.

Yet, it's never them who get the main role in big sponsorship deals.

So, we created ‘#daretosponsor’, in which we dared companies to sponsor a special athlete instead of a famous sports hero. The idea? Copying existing sponsorship campaigns. For example: we put a picture of a special athlete on a can, like our Belgian Red Devils on a can of Coca Cola. We made them shave as if for a Gillette commercial. And put their face on a billboard holding a product.

How do you convince companies to sponsor athletes with an intellectual disability instead of the big sports heroes? With dare to sponsor, we turned the roles upside down: we didn’t just show potential sponsors what they could do for us, but what our special athletes could do for them. And showing them as a good investment.

We targeted some major companies with a very personalized approach. We created spin-offs of their own well-known sponsor campaigns and replaced the usual celebrity with a special athlete. The call to action? Dare them to sponsor a special athlete as well.

While most B2B-campaigns happen under the radar, this one was widely spread in public. To raise pressure on the companies to accept the challenges, we asked sport fans in Belgium to support our campaign and join the debate on sponsorships for special athletes.

The idea was translated in a fully integrated approach. First of all, we’ve launched an online film, directly daring our prospects to sponsor. On the same day, we placed a billboard in front of P&G’s headquarters (Gillette), featuring a special athlete shaving himself. Moreover, we’ve also sent e-mails and a follow up direct mail containing a can featuring a special athlete, all adapted to the company they were sent to.

Besides, we bought, with a limited budget, online banners on marketing websites and Instagram ads, and pushed our content on LinkedIn, challenging brands and marketeers to #daretosponsor.

Influencer athletes supported the campaign on social media, encouraging companies to accept the challenge. Multiple companies were charmed by the challenges, some even responding on social with a video featuring the CEO who accepted the challenge.

We convinced 12 major brands to start a new partnership with Special Olympics. Including Procter & Gamble, Coca Cola (Aquarius), BNP Paribas, Mylène, Red Bull, Telenet, MCcain, Johnson & Johnson and Nestlé. Special Olympics received a sponsoring budget of over 1 million euro. With a cost of €80K, that means we had a return on investment of about 12.5 times the campaign budget.

Next, we had a total reach of over 23,4 million views in PR and an earned media value of more than 1.086.000 euros.

But most importantly, we enabled over 5000 athletes to get training resources for a year. And today still, we are talking with new potential partners. Because every athlete deserves a top sponsor.