Categories
other thoughts

Abbot World Marathons

[Yesterday’s run: 3.5 miles]

I am not running any marathons anytime soon.  But my wife is  big runner and a big social-media person.

She’s in this group of “ambassadors” for the Abbot World Marathons.  What ambassadors do is they talk up the marathons and the general goodness of the thing in on-line conversations, kind of a marketing thing.

Abbot is a big pharmaceuticals company.  They have some sort of sponsorship role.  The marathons are some of the largest marathon races in the world.  They are large and hard to get into.  I think the marathons are really independent organizations but they get some sort of sponsorship from Abbot…. that is my guess, I really don’t know.

Anyway, she’s in this group of cheerleaders for these big international marathons. And she enjoys that.

Me being the designated curmudgeon of the family, I have asked her what she gets out of it. Does she get a paid-for entry?  No. Does she get some enhanced chance of getting a hard-to-get entry in one of these marathons and pay for it herself?  No.  If she should make her way through the difficult entry process, pay her own way to the event, does she get to hob-nob with the Abbot corporate folks at their pre-marathon doo-dah?  No.  Does she get a pair of shoes?  A shirt?  A nice visor?  Maybe a flashlight?  No.

So far she has received one water bottle of the trade-show-swag type.  That’s it.

She does enjoy the on-line group and she meets some new people.  That’s worthwhile.

I pointed out to her that this probably means that the Abbot person in charge of social media marketing just doesn’t have much pull or much of a budget.  I don’t know what kind of big bucks  they spend sponsoring these events  (and I’m glad they do that).  But none of that has filtered into the social media realm yet.

 

One reply on “Abbot World Marathons”

Comments are closed.