QB1 provides holiday gifts like no other.

On December 4, Jacksonville Jaguars Quarterback Trevor Lawrence was injured during a Monday night game versus the Cincinnati Bengals. After refusing a golf cart and walking the tunnel at an eerily slow pace, media and social media went wild, most notably sports commentators and fans questioning, “Where is the golf cart?”.

We saw this as a huge opportunity to get E-Z-GO at the forefront of a relevant and timely conversation. So, Barkley pitched E-Z-GO and Trevor’s management and landed on our opportunity: Trevor was in the middle of sourcing holiday gifts for his 14 O-linemen for the holidays (a common practice for NFL QBs).

We were up against time with only 9ish days to execute and budget, with 14 free golf carts valuing up to $200,000.

Challenge

Besides working against the clock with a short time to execute and jumping through hoops with the client to get approvals, we also needed to make sure E-Z-GO stayed relevant in the news cycle long enough for us to pull off the activation.

Modern Consumer Insight

Overall, this opportunity came about by staying on top of cultural moments in general, but more specifically, recognizing how E-Z-GO could fit into the conversation.

Solution

We secured E-Z-GO’s approval, and we moved forward with sourcing 14 used golf carts from a local dealer. From there, we mapped out a plan to maximize the activation to curate an experience that garnered the most media and social coverage.

This meant going all out...

Planning:

Create copy and design for Instagram-worthy visuals for the reveal, such as big car bows and jumbo gift tags.
Messaging to ensure E-Z-GO was at the center of the conversation.
“Welcome to the E-Z-GO family” cards and brand information for each golf cart.
Earned media pitch plan that would create a groundswell of “organic media interest”.
Run of Show for reveal day.
Social and media listening approach.
Measurement plan.

Solution (Con't.)

Activation:

Planned and coordinated the execution of the “reveal” at the Jaguars’ facility with members of the E-Z-GO team on-site to stage the E-Z-GO golf carts while the players finished their practice.
Securing separate time to shoot content with Trevor Lawrence for E-Z-GO brand channels (unique from what he would be posting) to generate more hype around the gift.

Monitoring:

We spent the weekend monitoring news + social media for brand mentions.
Providing live updates to E-Z-GO with recommendations for what to reshare or comment on from their owned channels.
Creating a Released Dashboard with results for a client.

Results

373MM
earned media impressions.
60+
social media articles.
18MM
social media profiles reached.
11%
increase in website traffic.
20%
increase in active website users.
1788%
increase in Instagram profile interactions.

“You guys crushed it! Wow, I can’t believe we pulled this off,” said Sarah Beth Hill, VP of Marketing for E-Z-GO. “My phone just absolutely blew up, they just showed us on Sunday Night Football! ”

“I watched (us on) Sunday Night Football live…How cool,” said Samantha Smith, Media Engagement Strategist at E-Z-GO. "To see our partnership in Sports Illustrated too: wow! That’s incredible!”