The Price Cutter Charity Championship, a stop on the PGA Nationwide Tour and a fundraiser for roughly 40 local charities, has a new advertising campaign built around the slogan Big Impact.
The phrase emphasizes the impact of the event on charities geared toward children in the area, said Matt Sellmeyer, president of Schilling-Sellmeyer & Associates. He unveiled the campaign June 13 at a kick-off breakfast at Highland Springs Country Club.
The annual PCCC tournament, scheduled for Aug. 5-15, marks the 10th year Schilling-Sellmeyer has created its advertising campaign. Sellmeyer said each year brings the challenge of balancing the promotion of the golf tournament itself and the benefit it brings to charities.
In its 22 years, the tournament has raised almost $8.5 million for local charity. Last year's event raised more than $700,000.
“It’s always a juggling act, a challenge for us to put an emphasis on both,” he said, noting the golf tournament and advertising campaign are vehicles to get the word out about the fundraiser.
Event officials are shooting to raise an additional $500,000 by the end of the tournament in mid-August, said Missouri Sports Hall of Fame Director Jerald Andrews, noting about $1.6 million has been raised so far. Neither he nor Sellmeyer were alarmed by the number, with Sellmeyer saying it was “right on track.”
At the breakfast, Sellmeyer also unveiled the logo for Giff’s Gallery, a new fundraising tool that enables people to pledge donations based on the tournament performance of Matt Gifford, general manager and vice president of the Springfield Cardinals baseball team.
Gifford was presented with an exemption at the Monday breakfast, which allows him to play in the tournament as an amateur golfer. Unlike the professionals, who often use the tournament as a stepping stone to others, Gifford will play solely to raise funds. Pledges can be made per shot, hole or various other measures of Gifford’s game at
www.giffsgallery.org.
Sellmeyer said using Gifford’s position as a well-known community figure “who happens to be a pretty good golfer” was another way to spread word, perhaps reaching a new audience in baseball fans.
The ad campaign will be disseminated through television, radio, print and billboards, Sellmeyer said, though he added that several contracts were not yet finalized. The campaign is slated to begin about the first week of July, he said.
With the economy dampening charity donations but increasing the need, and events like the devastating tornado that ripped through Joplin last month, “we want to remind people that this is still a very important event for a lot of people,” Sellmeyer said.
Local organizations that benefit from the tournament include the Ronald McDonald House, which has been involved in the event for all of its 22 years, Convoy of Hope, AIDS Project of the Ozarks, and local food pantries and health clinics, among others.[[In-content Ad]]
