I have been the Relay Publicity chair for my city for 2 years and I am looking for different and inventive ways to publicize the event. Last year we did Paint the Town Purple, but wasn't as successful as we'd hoped because we tackled late in the Relay Season.

 

I saw an idea about having a Black Tie event which I would like to explore. Does anyone have any ideas? I would greatly appreciate any information you could give to me. Please feel free to email me at amylynn1016@hotmail.com as I might not check this site everyone day.

 

Thank you very much!

Amy

 

*Always remember the power of purple*

I want to pass along one a creative promotional idea I received.  A trendy happening in a nearby town with students is Phantom Boo around Halloween.  It started with someone leaving a ghost on your door and has evolved to leaving treats and other goodies. So the high school students decided to do Relay Phantom by leaving a bag with information on front doors.  It includes a note telling the neighbor that they have been tagged for Relay For Life.  They are using a luminaria bag with the Relay logo and are filling it with a poem called "Walk With Us", a survivor invitation, a brochure about the Relay, a luminaria form and a purple ribbon to tie around their mail box to show support for Relay For Life.

Walk With Us 

Come walk with us on the road to a cure.With laughter and tears, it’s a good time for sure.You’ll be glad you came as you walk through the nightKnowing with your help we are winning this fight. The first lap’s for victory, survivors stand proud.They march round the track to the cheers of the crowd.The next one’s for families, who help them get through,And stood there beside them with love, strong and true. We are here to fight cancer, we’ll keep coming back.Until there is a cure, we will return to the track.We’ll walk in the moonlight, we’ll walk in the sun,For 24 hours each year till we’ve won.So come and walk with us, how glad we’ll all be,When someday we walk in a world cancer free.

We are going to be handing out Publicity T-shirts with our New Website (that will be up eventually - or at least by the time of the kickoff) - they will have our theme, date, location and website on the back along with Celebrate. Remember. Fight on the front. We are hoping to hand out ~ 50 to the committee and community members.

We also had trouble getting the word out about Relay. Last year we invited the local newspaper to do a story about our personnal reasons to take up the fight. A survivor story to share is great. We gave information about the whole Relay experience. We got a lot of positive feedback & we got many new participants involved. Also, we sent flyers home through the schools about the event with contact information & a form they could mail back to ACS if they were interested.

Here are some ideas to try:

 

· Recruit a media team – with TV, papers, etc.

· Develop standard Media materials for your event (use the examples in the Darn Good Ideas at www.acsrelay.org) and share them with all your committee members and team captains.

· Survivor Publicity - Include stories about survivors in your marketing campaign

· Hang a Banner from a Crane – Have a construction company donate a crane and hang a banner from it to really get some attention!

· Hold a Relay For Life Kickoff! See the following link for Kickoff Darn Good ideas!

http://www.acsrelay.org/Darn_Good_Ideas/14-Relay_Kickoff_DGIs.doc

· Have a 1 hour skit that simulates a Relay For Life Event at a Team Captain’s Meeting, Kickoff, or other event where you’ll have lots of people who are new to Relay! – A “mock” Relay For Life that you whiz thru with the help of several other volunteers can help “bring Relay to life” for others… Have everything from campsite setup to a closing ceremony concentrated into a one hour “skit” that you put on. See the following link on how to do this:

http://www.acsrelay.org/Darn_Good_Ideas/14-Mini-Relay_In_A_Box.doc

· Stickers/decals in businesses that have donated! – This is a great way to acknowledge businesses that have donated and a good way to get publicity too! (thanks to Laurie Needham)

· Postering Day or Tag Day – “Have your event meet at a common spot, give them breakfast, and split up your town… spread out and put up posters, ask for donations, etc. door to door… One year we found a corporate sponsor who gave us $1000 and became part of a team!” (from Ramesh in Baltimore). Another example - “We are going to do sort of a “Tag Day” like the high school bands do. Spread out in the town, different teams, different areas and go door to door asking for donations – then we will meet up at one location for pizza – we did it last year and it worked very well, kind of gave everyone a jump start to get fundraising. One technique that the boy scouts use for their canned food drive is to leave a bag and then they pick it up a week later hanging on the door. We could leave a pamphlet describing Relay then come back a week later to collect donations – we’re figuring out logistics. Usually we just sell raffle tickets as we go. Any ideas? We’re looking for some kind of a little pamphlet to leave behind to let people know what we are doing – can you think of anything short that describes Relay and might have a luminary order form on it – or we could direct them to the website.” Thanks to Stacy and Ramesh for this idea!

· Parades – Are a great way to build awareness of Relay and even raise money! Some thoughts:

o Have a float in your local parade – Many teams/events have a float in a local parade – it is a great awareness building activity. Key things to do: 1. Have business cards and flyers to hand out. 2. Make both American Cancer Society and Relay For Life standout on the barrier. 3. Have Relay giveaways – we always have t-shirts and such left – give ‘em away! 4. Get survivors involved in it – they are your best ambassadors! Some examples:

o “We are going to be handing out past years tee shirts along with info giving our next year's date. Our "float" will be small with mainly survivors who can't walk the 3 mile length riding. Then in the back of the pick-up pulling the trailer we are going to make a life size luminary bag. It is going to have the Memory "sticker" on it in memory of all those that have lost the battle to cancer. Around our float we will have lots of banners and those walking will be in their tee shirts carrying banners and signs. We're hoping for a great turn out and to mainly bring Relay to everyone's attention” – (thanks to Patti!)

o “we do parades in several of the small towns in my county. We build float's in keeping with the theme of the parade, but add a RFL twist and we throw T-Shirts left over from the previous years event. Sometimes we throw candy with a message attached (Cho. Kisses with "Kiss cancer good-bye"; Resin candy with "Tell us your (reason) "Resin" to Relay; etc.) we have gotten first place every year and a lot of publicity.. seems to work really well, this year 3 of our new teams told us the learned about us at a parade last year... good luck!” (thanks to Omni38!)

· Parade - Hold a Mini-Relay Parade at your Kickoff – have teams have a simple float that fits their theme from the previous year, or one for the coming year… For example – if your theme is Fishing for a Cure, pull a fishing boat and have a team banner hanging on it…. Have your teams make a loop with their floats/themes to kickoff your kickoff.

· Parade - A Trucker’s parade against cancer that raised $17,500! – Truckers paid $250 entry fee, decorated their trucks with banners honoring survivors, and had a parade around the event, got donations (put in their truck-bed as they drove?). The event that did this had 66 trucks (If your event is the one that did this, please contact us and let us know so we can let people contact you if they want more details, if you don’t mind!)

· Quilt – Relay For Life T-Shirt Quilt & Pillows! – What an amazing idea! “Our Relay for Life Pillow went over well, we put out an email to other teams involved in the Heartland Division and got a good response we sold over $100.00 worth of pillows and even got some recognition on the local TV station the night of the Relay… [AND] The anniversary quilt we will be selling chances for the night of Heartland division’s 2007 Relay for Life night. The other 2 quilts we are not sure how to do the fund raising, we may sale them outright or try our luck on ebay. If you have questions, you can e-mail ebsportsmom@yahoo.com” . Thanks to Nancy S. and the St. Joseph, MO Relay For Life!

You could focus on one year, or get shirts from multiple years like Nancy S. did. Turn your idea into a challenge for your Relay or even your area where 1. you have publicity for finding t-shirts for quilts that are brought to your relay's or area Relay For Life kickoff... And you have regional goal of $x raised by doing quilts? Maybe even give a prize to the Relay that gets the most $$ raised by auctioning off the quilts?

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Hope this helps! Email rflvolunteer@gmail.com with questions or thoughts!