Turn this year’s marathon into a unique gaming experience for good and thereby propel the Samsung sponsorship and brand to forefront of consumers’ minds.

How? By creating a unique ecosystem that hacks standard marathon RFID timing technology based on stepping pads, to turn your run into a donation for good.

At the center of the ecosystem:

“S-Coins” = Samsung coins (RFID stepping pads we spread throughout the course) .

Each S-Coin= 0.25$ donation

The objective of the game: collect as many S-coins as possible spread over the running course. At the end of the run the sum you have accumulated in S-Coins will be donated in your name to the charity of your choice. The more coins you collect the bigger the impact of your individual run on giving back to the community and generating good for a great number of people.

At marathons runners get outfitted with an RFID chip which is pinned to their chest number and tracks their runtime. We used the exact same technology and printed dozens of stepping pads designed as Samsung S-Coins and spread them all over the marathon course. Each time a runner stepped on one of them, he collected money, Super Mario style. This money was accumulated under his own name and at the end of the run he could donate the money he collected to a good cause like hospitals or cancer research.

To increase participation in the experience, we created a VR arena where family and supporters could join in and collect more S-coins.

To create additional motivation, Samsung posted a live donation counter on their website and sent runners their runtime and the amount of money they collected and subsequently donated–information runners were proud to share with the social networks

* 40000 runners from over 40 countries collected over 2 million S-Coins.

* Over 500.000$ were donated.

* 100% engagement – all runners collected S-Coins and de facto gave back to the community.

* 80% of runners shared the experience on their social network. - For the first time ever, they boasted not only about their run time, but more importantly about how much money they donated.

* National and international press covered the event with special attention devoted to the innovative technology-based marathon gaming concept.

* As the positive chatter about the Samsung “Run.Play.Donate” Marathon gaming experience spread online via social feeds and the press, it became clear that this year’s sponsorship had done a lot more than provide the brand with valuable consumer facetime and exposure. It had provided runners with a unique, fun and meaningful experience and changed the sponsorship game all together.