Take One Digital Media joined forces with Special Olympics Maryland for the third year to produce zany viral media to pump up the volume on the 2010 Polar Bear Plunge.
"What we do every year is try to produce funny videos that will go viral. None of them are about Special Olympic athletes, or the Special Olympics at all. They're supposed to be kooky," says Liz Thibodeau, Take One Digital Media account manager.
This year the videos were done a la the Onion News, a fake news site, Thibodeau says. "We called it PNN, the
Plunge News Network. We did kind of pseudo news stories about plunge teams in the area that were doing wacky fundraisers. They've been very, very successful."
Take One released four videos, one a week beginning four weeks before the plunge. They also released daily videos the week before the plunge. Dubbed "Will it Plunge," the videos featured Tom Schniedwind, Special Olympics MD sports marketing director, plunging every morning off of Sandy Point. A riff of off David Letterman's "Will it Float" bits, Schniedwind plunged with different objects to see if they would plunge and also provided prospective plungers with tips.
"Yesterday morning, we put the Thursday morning video up and registered a 1000 unique hits within a couple of hours. It's truly being viral in nature where plungers are getting a huge kick out of it and passing it around," says Thibodeau.
The jewel of the series according to Take One is Special Olympic athlete Jimmy Myrick showing off his acting skills as American Idol's "Jimmy Randy" and a med-tech on the hit show "House". Contrary to the "tugging heart-string" approach used by many charities, plunge co-founder Tom Schniedwind is devoted to celebrating these athletes.
Thanks to these videos, the site saw a huge spike in traffic, viewers and buzz at
www.plungemd.com and in all social media and despite a down economy, donations rose significantly. "The videos are up on our site, they're up on YouTube."
On the Friday morning before the Jan. 30 plunge, Thibodeau says online donations had reached almost $2.5 million. "That's amazing. We've never seen the online donations that high. The Maryland plunge is the highest grossing single day fundraiser in the world."
Source: Liz Thibodeau, Take One Digital Media
Writer: Walaika Haskins