Chiefs Kingdom is passionate about two things: football and the Kansas City community. For over 30 years, the Kansas City Chiefs have marked the start of the new season with a citywide celebration dubbed “Red Friday.” The main event of the last nine years is the limited-edition Chiefs flags, sold across the metro at the start of each season to raise money for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Kansas City (RMHC-KC). The Chiefs and RMHC-KC have tapped local McDonald’s restaurants to participate in the Red Friday festivities as the main driver to sell the Chiefs flags and motivate the community to donate to help sick children and their families.
Trozzolo was tasked with bringing McDonald’s to the forefront of this community celebration and charity initiative. Coming on the heels of a wildly successful year that raised over a million dollars for the cause, and after narrowly missing a repeat Super Bowl victory, the challenge was to rally Kansas City for the start of the new Chiefs season while raising money for RMHC-KC.
Our team utilized traditional and creative tactics to drive the community to McDonald’s and raise awareness of local owner-operators’ involvement with this incredible cause, while continuing to grow the recognition of the event and funds raised.
“We are so proud to align with three amazing brands in McDonald’s, RMHC-KC and the Kansas City Chiefs. Our top priority for McDonald’s is to ensure people across the region understand that these restaurants are locally owned and operated, and that supporting the local community is a true passion for the brand. As Chiefs Kingdom has continued to grow, it has given us a great opportunity to build more excitement for Red Friday and awareness of the McDonald’s connection with its namesake charity – RMHC-KC,” said Josh Brewster, Trozzolo Vice President, Public Relations.
We crafted a press release to announce the event and pitched to various media outlets across the Kansas City metro area. We also created Red Friday swag kits for media and social media influencers to build excitement and awareness leading up to the event. Additionally, we designed dynamic graphics to promote the event across social media platforms.
“We had an incredibly successful Red Friday last year, so we took it as a challenge to continue to build on that record-setting turnout,” said PR Strategist Abi White. “It’s important for us to implement creative ways to involve the community in this event so that they envision McDonald’s when they think of Red Friday and donate to RMHC-KC.”
Our team coordinated the Red Friday event at a local McDonald’s and involved high-profile public figures to participate, including Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt, Missouri Governor Mike Parson, RMHC-KC CEO Tami Greenberg, and former Chiefs player Bobby Bell, as well as local McDonald’s owner-operators, Chiefs cheerleaders, KC Wolf and more. All four major local TV stations were on-site to cover the event live and interview local McDonald’s owner-operators, RMHC-KC representatives and customers purchasing flags.
Through Trozzolo’s efforts, McDonald’s received extensive press coverage across TV, online, radio and social media, reaching over 1.68 million people. The Red Friday event raised more than $900K for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Kansas City, with more than $656K from flag sales at McDonald’s alone.
