Downtown Boxing Gym

Client

Downtown Boxing Gym

Year

2022

Projects

Brand Strategy
Campaign Concept
Direct Mail
Email
Social
Landing Page

Never Tell Us the Odds

The name is a bit misleading. After beginning as an after-school boxing program for kids, Downtown Boxing Gym evolved into an incredibly successful nonprofit organization that provides comprehensive academic, athletic and social services for kids in Detroit.

After 16 years of groundbreaking achievements, DBG worried it was becoming a victim of its own success. Individual donations were down, due in part to so many corporate sponsors. My partner and I stepped in to course-correct that narrative, developing a breakthrough year-end fundraising campaign that would shift the organization’s public perception.

Campaign Concept

For the campaign concept, we knew we needed to deliver a harder-hitting message that would shake lapsed donors out of their complacency and motivate them to re-engage with DBG. Our “Never Tell Us the Odds” concept juxtaposed stats illustrating the severity of the challenges faced by Detroit’s students with stats highlighting DBG’s extraordinary accomplishments. The resulting tone was one of defiant optimism in the face of overwhelming odds.

For the key visual, we used a striking black-and-white photo of a lion, nodding to DBG’s logo and dramatizing the organization’s indomitable spirit. The end result was a campaign that appealed to the heart as much as the head.

Campaign Tactics

With our concept fleshed out, my partner and I set to work bringing it to life across DBG’s organic marketing channels, including direct mail, email, social media and its website. We orchestrated every aspect of the campaign; in addition to developing dozens of creative assets, we also set the campaign timeline, coordinated with print vendors, built out the fundraiser microsite, provided ongoing strategic recommendations post-launch and much more.