For a marathon or half marathon runner or walker, having a medal hung around your neck at the finish line is a big deal. Only about 0.5 percent of the U.S. population has run a marathon, so wearing a medal proudly after completing a marathon or half marathon is a rite of passage and shouts, “I’m part of the 1 percent.”
I know this because I’m the media director for the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Columbus Marathon. And I have first-hand experience of how important the finisher medal is — especially after the 2014 event that has been infamously dubbed the “medal mishap.”
Unfortunately, for 18,000 Columbus Marathon participants on Oct. 19, 2014, the availability of a finisher medal at the finish line was a very big question mark.
Despite ordering the medals five months prior, they were delayed by a typhoon in Japan, a West Coast dock strike and a backlog of shipments getting through U.S. customs. Even though the vendor drove 36 hours across country from California to get the medals to the finish line in Columbus, they didn’t arrive until two hours after the race started. By that time, approximately 3,500 athletes had already finished.
A negative into a positive
The marathon’s operations and social media teams alerted athletes about the problem, explained the situation and identified ways athletes could get their medals on-site. As a result, 17,000 out of the 18,000 athletes were able to receive their medals before they left the event.
However, the social media damage was done. Athletes were posting their disappointment and questioning the efforts and organization of the Columbus Marathon team for not securing something as basic as the medals for the finish line. Pretty soon the negative posts on our social media channels became overwhelming and out of control.
We knew our athletes needed the entire story from us. We developed a blog post that detailed what happened with the medals and told the story of how two men drove cross-country in a race against time to get the athletes their medals. The post went viral, receiving 34,000 views in the first few hours and coverage in the Columbus Dispatch, 610 WTVN, Columbus Business First, TV stations and running trade publications.
More importantly, the full and open explanation and back-story that the blog provided turned a bad situation into a positive. The online conversation changed from people being disappointed that their medal was given to them in a plastic bag to talking about how much more their medal meant to them after reading the blog post. Many pledged that they would continue to come back to this event because the race team cared so much.
The lesson
Our target markets (in this case, the athletes) needed to be given full and open communication, via social and traditional media channels, to better understand the problem. Without a doubt, full and open communication helped to salvage — and enhance — the reputation of the great institution known as The Columbus Marathon.
Sarah Irvin Clark is the owner of Irvin Public Relations, which focuses on event publicity with a touch of small business, real estate and business-to-business clients. Sarah founded Irvin PR in 2004 and the team has since grown to serve more than 20 clients with varying public relations and marketing needs.
