Case Study: Black Girls RUN! × AARP Drive to End Hunger 5K/10K Race Event Identity

Presented By: The Coca-Cola Company | Partners: HOSEA Feed the Hungry & Homeless, MotionsRole: Creative Director, Brand & Event Identity | Category: Cause Marketing / Race Event Branding | Launch: 2012

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The Brief

Two organizations, two very different reasons to lace up. Black Girls RUN! built its following on community, sweat equity, and a promise to preserve the sexy one mile at a time. AARP's Drive to End Hunger campaign runs on something heavier, getting food to older adults who need it. The brief was to put both missions on one shield, one shirt, and one race weekend in Atlanta, without either brand looking like a guest at somebody else's cookout.

Co-branding sounds simple on a slide. In practice it is two client teams, two legal departments, and two very different definitions of "on brand," all needing to agree on the same six inches of fabric.

The Work

I led the identity system that carried the partnership from announcement through race weekend, which included:

• Designing the primary event mark, a shield that stacks Black Girls RUN! and AARP Drive to End Hunger inside one crest, with a bold yellow "5K & 10K Race" banner doing the work of holding both names at equal weight, neither logo playing second fiddle

• Building a secondary retail mark for merchandise, a crossed fork and knife under "the race to end hunger," giving the apparel line its own visual wit without competing with the sponsor lockup on the same shirt

• Extending the system across event tees, step-and-repeat signage, digital ads, and a QR-code driven registration push for blackgirlsrun.com/drivetoendhunger

• Coordinating placement and hierarchy alongside presenting sponsor The Coca-Cola Company and partner organizations HOSEA Feed the Hungry & Homeless and Motions, so the sponsor bar read like a coalition and not a logo pile-up

The Translation

The hard part was never the shield shape. It was making a grassroots running community and a national nonprofit-corporate campaign sound like they finished each other's sentences. Black Girls RUN! speaks in sneakers and pink pom-poms. AARP speaks in mission statements and stakeholder sign-off. The identity had to hold both registers at once, loud enough for a starting line, credible enough for a corporate deck.

An MBA will tell you a co-branded logo is just two marks sharing rent. What it doesn't tell you is that the rent negotiation gets loud fast when one tenant runs on community hustle and the other runs on a pension plan.

The Outcome

Race weekend ran in Atlanta, GA, September 14 through 16, 2012, as a coed 5K and 10K open to the community, registration driven by the digital push and the QR code on every ad unit. The identity showed up everywhere a runner looked: on the shirt on her back, on the welcome banner at check-in, on the finish line she was chasing. Partner two brands well, and the race becomes bigger than either logo on its own.

Case study prepared by Delanie West, MBA, Founding Principal, Be Super Creative. Source: Black Girls RUN! and AARP Drive to End Hunger 5K/10K Race Weekend, Atlanta, GA, September 14 to 16, 2012.