iFightCancer

This one sold out first.

The only thing Relay for Life had in common with track was the stadium that it was hosted in. Most of Relay for Life was walking and selling things, but to us naive middle-school runners, we saw it as a race, and we wanted to win. Our parents filled out our paperwork, organized our team, and paid for our admission. On the day of the relay, we were ready to race.

It was then that we realized nobody else was here to run, and in fact, we had been fooled into doing volunteer work. Desperate for a way to earn money, we sold lemon sticks, which attracted bees and scared away customers. We shamefully donated a measly fifty dollars, ranking us as the last place team.

Might have infringed on a copyright.

As high school freshmen, embarrassed by our previous performance, my teammates planned on sticking to actual running, and leaving volunteer work to the Boy Scouts. However, I intended to give fundraising another chance.

I had enrolled in a graphic design course, and my newfound understanding of Photoshop gave us a brand new niche. I began designing shirts with pop-culture and viral video references, and posted them to Facebook. This was my first experience in a viral marketing campaign, and it worked. I bought blank tee shirts and iron on printer paper, and began an assembly line, mass-producing our comedic tees. After making close to fifty shirts, we headed to the relay.

This one was right before Twitter got a
new logo and font.

At the relay, we sold every shirt in under an hour, and quadrupled last year’s donation, beating out the team still selling lemon sticks. Everyone seemed to have our tee shirts on, and it made us feel like we had won Relay for Life.