We firmly believe that through sports, we have the power to change lives. As ambitious as this goal is, could we widen its scope even more? Could we have the power to change the world through sports? Run for the Oceans aimed to do just that by putting the marine plastic pollution crisis at the heart of its purpose. Our company’s own efforts to live plastic-free and in an environmentally conscious way were a great start, but were merely a drop in the ocean. We needed to raise awareness on a much larger scale and grow support on a global level. How? Rally the support of our millions of registered app users all around the world and let them give renewed purpose to their running – in the form of $1 donated for every kilometer run from 8 June - 8 July 2018 to fight marine plastic pollution.

The very first Run for the Oceans actually took place in 2017. The campaign was simply about raising awareness for the marine plastic pollution problem. It was successful, but we weren’t satisfied with “good enough” – 2018 had to be bigger and better. We needed to offer a more tangible reason to run. What would really spur our users to join and participate in Run for the Oceans? The answer: money. We would turn their efforts into actual monetary contributions toward fighting the ocean plastic problem. For every kilometer run with the Runtastic App during the campaign time frame, our parent company would donate $1 toward solving the plastic problem.

As a global running app, we had a massive arsenal of possible participants that we could inspire and activate with the Run for the Oceans initiative. With the help and support of our parent company, the reach and the impact of the campaign could be truly impressive. We needed to decide how to talk to the right people at the right time and in the right place. A wide-reaching communication strategy was designed to make use of all available touchpoints we had, from social media to email to messaging within our apps themselves. We rallied local running groups all over the world, who use our app as their platform, to host live events to get people involved in their community. We made our message clear, uncomplicated and moving – Run for the Oceans, every kilometer counts toward the fight against marine plastic pollution.

Considering the scope of what we intended to achieve, our planning needed to be extensive and detailed. Every department in the company had a hand in making Run for the Oceans not only come to life, but also achieve its goal. Several months went into the creation of textual and visual assets (in 15 languages), the planning of live events around the world, including a kick-off run in Los Angeles, and organization of participation-boosting events with our in-app running groups – not to mention all the technical implementations within our app to ensure a seamless participation process for our users. The scale was massive – we attempted to talk to every user in a way that inspired them to join. We utilized every platform, opportunity and moment of our one-month campaign to create as much enthusiasm for this campaign amongst our users as we had in our hearts.

We asked for the support of our users, and they came running. Although we promoted Run for the Oceans extensively before its start, it officially went live on 8 June, World Oceans Day. By 14 June, we achieved our one-million kilometer goal. On 8 July, the campaign had 924,237 participants and a total of 12,402,855 km run. Our $1,000,000 donation cap felt ambitious in the beginning, however the power of the cause quickly proved us wrong. We’re currently working on the 2019 campaign and have applied all lessons learned from 2018 to make this year even more successful. We informed our users about how the money raised was used to benefit the cause, including the foundation of a digital ocean school to educate future generations about being part of the pollution solution.