Planning the inaugural and large-scale bike event, coming out of the pandemic
The Baycrest Foundation is an academic health sciences centre fully affiliated with the University of Toronto and is a global leader in aging and brain health. They embarked on becoming the new host of Toronto’s historic DVP bike ride event along the city’s busiest highways.
Outside of the many challenges of planning and executing a sizeable event, with no historical data or learnings to lean on, Rebel & Thorn was engaged to develop the media promotion of the charity ride, specifically through paid media.
Here’s what we faced:
As Baycrest is a charitable organization, budgets were a reality, so it was crucial to make their paid media spend work harder and consult vendors who were willing to offer discounted and bonus media to extend the campaign’s reach and impact
Constructing a paid media plan that drove awareness for the event and enticed users to sign-up, register, donate, and participate
With no historical data or planning framework to utilize, incorporating robust channels that are known to be successful based on the campaign’s specific goals, but to also understand and gather learnings for future years
We managed the campaign from end to end - from planning, executing, optimizing, and analyzing results. The media plan was constructed based on the overall goals of the event as briefed from the Baycrest team. We connected and implemented their technical framework for their digital platforms to provide insight on the customer journey, engaged audiences, and for deep attribution analysis. Lastly, we maximized the vendor relationships to advocate on behalf of Baycrest for as much bonus and discounted media, along with other value adds to assist with the event promotion, to ensure the paid media plan got as much “bang for it’s buck”.
Overall the event raised nearly $3MM and over 5K participants who rode individually, or with a team of friends, family, or colleagues. The campaign drove of 252MM+ impressions and an overall blended CPM of $1.50, across both digital and traditional channels.
Digital:
Drove 2.15x conversions versus forecast (~4.3K vs ~2K original estimate)
Generated a digital CPA (cost per sign-up) of $30
Achieved an overall $3.15 ROAS (return on ad spend) and $411K revenue generated
Traditional:
Over $1MM+ in bonus media (vs original vendor rate cards) and 83%+ bonus impressions
225MM+ impressions served over the course of the campaign
Given the success of the 2022 and 2023 paid media campaigns, Rebel & Thorn is working alongside the Baycrest team again to promote the 2024 event.