Emotionally Connecting the Sport Clips Haircuts Audience With Its Philanthropic Efforts
Emotional Connections Require Emotional Work
Emotional Connections Require Emotional Work
Sport Clips supports numerous philanthropic initiatives through its Haircuts with Heart program. We needed to get its audience to feel emotionally connected to Sport Clips through the nonprofits it supports. And though it's one of the many reasons we love working with Sport Clips, the challenge was the company simply supports too many philanthropies to cover in a single effort.
We had to discover which of the nonprofits made the most sense to focus on.
If the audience does not feel an emotional connection with the people impacted by these nonprofits, then we will not increase Sport Clips’ mindshare or placement.
By focusing on the nonprofits the Sport Clips audience connects with most - veterans – we were able to make an impact on its largest target.
Since Dream Flights and the VFW’s “Sport Clips Help A Hero Scholarship” program are two completely different entities with two very different missions, we produced a TV spot for each.
Everyone has a senior in their life who likes to tell a particular story over and over again. We shared one such story from a charming gentleman who also happened to be a 23-year Air Force veteran and served in the Korean War. The tears were real.
Utilizing real-life veterans as our hired talent, we showed how veterans encounter new challenges once their service is complete and how Sport Clips does its part to make their lives a little easier by providing more than $1,000,000 a year in scholarship funds to veterans.
The spot supported the frontline efforts of stylists, franchisees, and product partners in "Help A Hero" becoming the largest scholarship program of its kind. For the ninth year in a row, Sport Clips Haircuts presented a check to the VFW Foundation exceeding $1M for veterans scholarships, and, to date, Help A Hero has afforded $13.8 million in scholarships awarded to more than 3,000 student veterans.
