At this year’s PRovoke 2020 SABRE Awards North America, we’re honored to announce that we’ve taken home the prize for Consumer Campaign of the Year for Everlast’s “Be First” Campaign. The competition was fierce with over 550 entries submitted in this year’s competition. Finalists in the category included industry disruptors such as, Edelman, Ogilvy and Current Global.

Everlast, a global icon, selected SourceCode Communications as its first PR Agency of Record in 2019 to launch “Be First,” a global campaign meant to communicate a powerful statement with purpose, authenticity, and ability to appeal to various audiences. Through extensive research we found that the boxing scene was filled with historical figures who were the first of their kind like Sugar Ray Leonard, Muhammad Ali and Manny Pacquiao. When we looked into the boxing scene further, we came across Patricio Manuel, the world’s first transgender professional boxer. SourceCode and Everlast knew there was an opportunity to highlight Patricio’s win in his first professional fight and position Patricio as a ‘first’ just like the legends that came before him. Through “Be First,” Everlast was also able to target younger generations including Millennials and Gen Z, who are invested in civil rights and social issues.

The campaign’s media strategy included a combination of pre-brief pitching, landing 20 interviews with national top-tier publications along with a social media driven campaign unveiling the #befirst hashtag across all Everlast social channels. You can read more about the campaign case study here.

We would like to congratulate all winners and finalists in this year’s competition and thank PRovoke immensely along with the panel of judges who spent time reviewing our submissions. We’re looking forward to next year’s awards. For additional information on the event and winners, please see the link here.