A jaw-dropping $90,000 was raised by last week’s fast-paced, rousing, crazy 4th annual “Battle for Hope,” aka the agency “Battle of the Bands” held at the Cubby Bear that benefits the Off the Street Club’s summer camp program.
The funds will send 180 kids from the mean streets of West Garfield to OTSC’s Camp Mathieu in Wheaton. Last year’s $60,000 allowed 120 children to attend.
Cramer-Krasselt’s The Angry PiCKLES won “Best Agency Band” for the second consecutive year. Trisect’s The Big T’s and DigitasLBI’s The Deliverables were also voted the top bands of 2016 – the second year for the latter.
Abelson-Taylor’s band Hard to Swallow, Accenture’s Fjordinary Heroes and Weber Shandwick’s RFP were the other participating bands. They all played a mix of classic and contemporary pop, rock and R&B hits.
Beating 2015’s $60,000 by 30% this year was largely due to wider advertising community support and more sponsors than before, says Kris English of DigitasLBi, a “Battle” organizer and producer along with the agency’s Simon Kissler and Sujal Patel who leads the initiative.
“Tickets sold out two weeks in advance, so we knew we’d have a capacity crowd, and we had long lines of people outside the door waiting to get it,” English says.
Club management had told the organizers that its capacity was 1,000, “and that’s the number we achieved,” says AbelsonTaylor’s Marita Gomez, one of many volunteers. “I couldn’t hear the next day. Someone said I should’ve worn ear plugs.”
Tickets were so hot that last-minute fans huddled outside the club looking around for scalpers in a vain effort to get in.
A group of celebrity judges from the music industry chose the winners. “It was a hard choice, because all the bands were terrific,” notes Dave Dakich of CRC, whose prize to the winner was a CRC recording session.
The Cramer-Krasselt PiCKles band consists of campaign manager Warren Legner on drums; web developer Matt Slaughter and AD Miles Jappa, guitar; PR/social senior manager Jarett Hothan, bass and web developer Kent Widman keyboards/samples. Vocalists are CD Jimmy Dietzen, senior account executive Cara Maclean and account exec Kamerin Elsasser.
After the competition ended many attendees headed for an after party at a club down the block that turned out to be a cheering section for the Blackhawks’ victory against the St. Louis Blues.
Helping the “Battle” achieve its record funding were sponsors: VIP, Pandora; Diamond, Salesforce, Magnetic, xAd, Pushspring; Gold, Opera Mediaworks and Silver, Adtheorent, Amobee, AOL, Celtra, Cluep, GumGum, Hulu, Maxpoint, Rubicon Project, Saddington Baynes, Sharethrough, Storyboards Inc., Snapchat, Spredfast, Tapad, Townsquare Media, Twitch, Visu and Whisper. General: Acquia, Digital Trends, HP and SPIN.
Feel the groove on ReelChicago’s Facebook photo album here.
