Yesterday, I was flying back to Chicago after a weekend away. I was flipping through the latest issue of American Way, the in-flight publication from American Airlines, and was thrilled to see a feature on our friend Bob Hurley, Sr., promoting his new book Chasing Perfect: The Will to Win in Basketball and in Life.
Over the last 40 seasons, Coach Hurley has leveraged the success of St. Anthony basketball to fundraise on behalf of the needy high school. But his other weapon in the fight to save St. Anthony has been his belief in the power of media to grow an audience. This book is the latest example of that.
Spreading awareness of the importance of the school to its Jersey City community – its success stories in the classroom and on the basketball court – is the reason that Coach Hurley and St. Anthony allowed TeamWorks Media’s cameras inside their classrooms, practices, games and homes to produce The Street Stops Here.
TeamWorks Media was motivated by the incredible impact the school was having on the community: we pledged 10% of all gross revenue from the film and its ancillary revenue streams back to the school. The school was motivated by the impact the film could have on their fundraising efforts. In the end, we both won by strategically maximizing the media impact of their story, sharing it across multiple platforms, in a campaign that continues three years later.
Through The Street Stops Here, we were able to grow St. Anthony’s audience in the most beneficial way possible: we expanded their donor pool through media-driven strategies including:
- Comprehensive PR (The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated and ESPN) and social media (Facebook and Twitter)
- National television distribution (PBS, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, MSG Network, and MSG Varsity)
- Design and creation of a signature website to promote the film, the school (with a direct link to a donation page) and DVD retail
- Home video distribution, selling DVDs through Amazon, Walmart, Borders and more. We also created revenue through online streaming sources like Netflix and Amazon
- Creation of a business leadership workshop using the film as a centerpiece for leadership lessons that can be applied to the corporate world
In the end, The Street Stops Here has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for St. Anthony High School, thanks to forward-thinking media strategy. With every broadcast, every blog post, every tweet, the audience for The Street Stops Here (and for the St. Anthony High School community) grows larger – and donations keep coming in, years after its initial broadcast in 2010.
Media strategy isn’t the only secret weapon, though. Coach Hurley considers it his personal responsibility to market the success of the basketball program to benefit the school. He pounds the pavement every day on their behalf. A percentage of every dollar he makes – the books, the speaking engagements, the camps – everything he does in addition to the fundraising efforts of St. Anthony – goes back to the school.
Seeing Hurley and his book featured in American Way made me smile: I love seeing them continue to leverage media as a core piece of their fundraising strategy. (And coming back to cold Chicago from 85 and sunny Miami – I needed an excuse to smile.)
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The world needs more people like Bob Hurley. Coach has a tough balancing act everyday with media (like his recent book) – he needs to be compelling enough to the public so they will buy his book, but he doesn’t want to hit them over the head with the ask for money to support the school.
This is so true, Mike. What Hurley does – his unique brand of success – requires true passion. Passion for the game, passion for the kids, passion for the community. It’s a special kind of person who can make that kind of an impact.
Couldn’t agree more. I first heard about The Street Stops Here a couple months after reading The Miracle of St. Anthony, which chronicles Coach Hurley’s (SPOILER ALERT) undefeated state champ squad from 2003-04. Both stories were incredibly compelling, so much so that I started emailing Emily to learn more about TeamWorks before I had even seen the movie (and now my desk is 10 ft away from hers, happy ending eh!?).
The Street Stops Here’s ability to capture an audience came full circle a few weeks ago, when my roomates and I were watching Mike Rosario drain buckets for the Florida Gators in the NCAA tourney. One buddy pointed out, “that guy is from the Bob Hurley movie you showed us!”, before my other roomates chimed in to confirm. Yup!…and I didn’t even have to make the connection.
Ha! We’re happy to have you, Sebastian!
I love a good in-flight magazine PR placement. You get a very captive audience!
This is true, Lauren! We’ve been fortunate enough to have a few of our documentaries licensed by airlines for in-flight programming. It’s an awesome space to play in — your audience is literally strapped in.