Personal Blogs
Following are some suggestions that we proposed in a brain storming session conducted with one of the oldest Marathons of India.
XYZMarathon has made tremendous contributions to making marathons popular
across India, but such information is not readily available to current
runners. There is a need to promote this.
There are frequent marathons being organized everywhere in the country, but
very few people know the right dos and don’ts while organizing them. Given
XYZMarathon’s years of experience in organizing marathons, it can
develop a standard protocol for managing such events, which can be followed
by all organizers.
To spread awareness about running and related sports, there are many
countrywide groups that are active. In order to promote XYZMarathon and
running, instead of targeting individual runners from different regions, we
propose that XYZMarathon can empower these running groups to spread
awareness in their localities. This can be achieved by sharing training plans
(diet and workout), teaching strength training methods, helping them organize
local community runs, providing them with digital presence, and promoting the
individual groups.
Every running event these days requires online registration, typically
through profit-driven companies’ platforms. Instead of this, if XYZMarathon
helps create one online platform where registration can be done and funds can
be disbursed to respective organizers, it would streamline the process. This
would require approving and endorsing the running groups who will also be the
organizers. Another benefit of this is that a database of runners will be
created, which can be reached for participation in the final event.
For better engagement and brand promotion, we suggest starting “Super Sunday” challenges. For example, those who participate and successfully complete four Super Sunday runs could receive an online certificate or even a discount (15/25%) in the final event of the same category. Both physical and virtual events can be targeted.
Instead of delegating final event responsibilities to individuals, it can be
assigned to groups from the very early stages. This will help groups engage
with XYZMarathon organization very early on and develop a sense of
ownership.
Running needs to be promoted in schools to encourage everyone to adopt running as a lifestyle. Introducing strength training and yoga in schools is one way to achieve this, and encouraging schools to organize marathons for students and parents could be another.
Pacers can be announced early, 16 to 12 weeks before the event, allowing each pacer to follow a training plan and also assist in promoting the event.
Social media promotion should be carried out throughout the year to increase brand awareness, done regularly but not aggressively. In addition to promoting the final event, promotion could focus on dos and don’ts in running, supporting other events hosted by various running groups, or even promoting the running groups themselves.
Creating a portal for all running groups to announce their activities and share information about them. This will also help new runners discover groups in their surroundings.
Core idea is to empower the local running groups to spread the awareness about the runnings and promoting events than individual runners. Its a more a federated, bottom-up, distributed model than the traditional, top-down, centralized model.