Tin Can PR’s ‘I Play Fair – Say NO! to Doping’ Cape Argus Cycle Tour PR campaign for the SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport (SAIDS), won a gold PRISM in the public sector category last night at the awards ceremony held at the Hilton, in Sandton. 

“We are very proud of this accolade which represents an awesome achievement,” says Tin Can PR head, Debby Reader. “The campaign created mass awareness and spread the messages of ethics, fair-play and anti-doping in sport, through harnessing participation of two formidable political opponents - Sport & Recreation Minister, Fikile Mbalula and Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, who cycled alongside celebrities and public figures in the I Play Fair branded team to promote sport free from the use of prohibited substances.” 

Reader says that the campaign received 90 media mentions including front-page coverage and prime time TV and radio exposure, and print and online coverage via a constant flow of newsworthy stories distributed to media throughout the campaign. 

The campaign has also received high praise in parliament, and commendations from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as a prime example of a highly effective anti-doping PR campaign. David Bellairs, head of the Cycle Tour trust, commented in an interview that the Cape Argus Cycle Tour had never received such extensive media exposure and was more successful from a media perspective than when they had Lance Armstrong ride the tour two years ago. 

CEO of SA Institute for Drug-Free Sport (SAIDS), Khalid Galant, said the proactive I Play Fair education and awareness campaign around drug-free sport has catapulted doping issues into the mainstream and has raised the awareness and profile around doping and drugs in sport.

Tin Can PR is also responsible for the Institute’s on-going anti-doping education and awareness PR and stakeholder relations with Government, sporting bodies and anti-doping agencies around the world.

“Tin Can PR has elevated the Institute’s profile substantially and has raised the awareness of the dangers of doping and profiled high profile athletes that test positive resulting in over R34-million worth of coverage for the year including 24 front pages,” says Reader. 

The I Play Fair campaign also made the prestigious Virgin Active Sport Industry Awards 2013 Short List for ‘Best Use of PR in a Sport Campaign.’

Special Mention

Tin Can PR also received a PRISM ‘special mention’ for its Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) campaign in the Integration of traditional and new media category. 

Reader says that the campaign showcased the CPUT engineering faculty’s world-class capabilities and profiled the institution’s Cape Speed team and its formula built car, which competed at Silverstone in the UK as part of the international Formula Student (FS) motorsport competition, and profiled the real-time tweet-powered Scalextric race track, an exact replica of the UK’s Silverstone race track, via social networks, tweets and Facebook likes. 

“The campaign drove talkability amongst the target market and attained its communication objectives with an innovative, interactive approach across traditional and new media, resulting in front page coverage and 61 media mentions across print, broadcast and online, as well as over 5,000 tweets for the tweet-powered scalextric race track.”