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eBay Europe: eBay is the world’s leading e-commerce company with a global portfolio of businesses that enables hundreds of millions of people to buy, sell and pay online.
CLIENT CHALLENGE:
eBay Europe was the principal sponsor of The Great River Race, a local community event taking place near it’s UK HQ. The event itself was a river rowing challenge over the River Thames – a 21 mile rowing challenge from East London to West London – Ham – passing through eBay’s HQ with circa 300 boats and 3000 participants taking part. The sponsorship was effectively a money exchange for some branding. The challenge was to make it something that would truly benefit the eBay organisation – internally, externally or ideally both.
WHAT WE DID:
ACTIVATED was brought into operationally deliver the sponsorship both for the internal organisation as well as for the Great River Race in September 2010.
In 2011, the ACTIVATED team began to build a comprehensive 360 degree sponsorship activation programme.
Between 2010 and September 2013, the ACTIVATED team:
Drove an increase in employee participation numbers from 14 to 130 – and from one office to participants from Berlin, Zurich, Basel, Dublin, Copenhagen and Richmond offices
Drove an increase in the after-event celebration from 30 people in September 2010 to over 250 in September 2013
Built up a single corporate sponsorship identity in 2012 and moved to 14 separate team identities under one branding framework
Moved charity donations from a £3000 corporate donation in 2010 to over £28,000 raised by 130 participants in 2013 for 14 separate charities
Built up a programme of events to ensure buzz that included kick-off, pre-event and post-event activities
Drove new revenue for eBay Inc. by implementing PayPal as a payment mechanism on the event site where previously only a competitor payment platform was available.
RESULTS:
Cited as one of the key activities in the ‘Best Places to Work’ surveys with eBay committing greater budget to the event vision as developed by the ACTIVATED Team. Best ebay inc. employee verbatim: ‘’We went into the event as colleagues. We left as best friends.’’ The Client won a personal achievement award for leading the excellent 2011 sponsorship activation programme, delivered by ACTIVATED.
METRICS:
Grew employee participation over 8x in three years.
ADDITIONAL BUSINESS:
Supported the eBay Click and Collect programme by providing specialist consultancy to help meet the programmes aggressive 2013 Christmas goals
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The ACTIVATED team were able to take a disjointed sponsorship in 2010 and over time build a programme that was cited as one of the drivers for eBay UK’s high placement in best places to work survey in 2013.
Though the sponsorship was for a one-off race, the ACTIVATED team were able to build an end-to-end platform that provided employees great benefits via an engagement programme that started in May and finished in October, help raise record amounts by participants for charity, provided closer integration between the sponsor’s asset and the principal sponsor, eBay Inc., and created an after-event hospitality envied by all at the race. Every year, they focused on improving the user experience so that our employees received a fantastic end-to-end experience.
Over the three plus years that ACTIVATED led this for us, we appreciated their passion, love of our brands and their global/local brand framework approach to the unique challenge that is eBay inc – four unique brands (eBay, Gumtree, PayPal, eBay Enterprise), six european participating offices – and their ability to respond to our intensive demands.
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Gino Coquis – eBay Europe
