Mercury Marine, announced that proceeds from the sale of a Bahamas-themed T-shirt have generated a donation of more than $15,000 to the American Red Cross to support Hurricane Dorian relief efforts.
Mercury began offering the shirt at its apparel website, MercuryDockstore.com, soon after Dorian devastated the Bahamas in early September. The T-shirt featured Mercury Marine branding, a line-drawing map of the Bahamas, the country’s national flag and the words, “2019 Hurricane Dorian Relief.” It became so popular that Mercury decided to keep the shirt available through mid-November.
“Many of our customers were affected by the storm and it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to help,” Michelle Dauchy, Mercury Marine chief marketing officer, said in a statement. “Threds, Inc., our partner in hosting and managing the Mercury Dockstore, played a huge role in conceiving this initiative and spooling it up quickly. The generosity of everyone who purchased the shirt, many of whom were inspired by some outstanding social-media engagement by Mercury’s partners, made this fundraising effort a big success.”
Additionally, social media played a key role in generating support for the relief efforts in the performance-boating community. Nor-Tech Hi-Performance Boats launched the Hurricane Dorian Social Relief Social Media Challenge and provided the T-shirts to its employees, who wore them in front of one of the company’s boats for a photo. Nor-Tech posted the photo on Facebook with a challenge to fellow performance boat builder Marine Technology Inc., to do the same.
“There was a snowball effect,” Stuart Halley, general manager of Mercury Racing, said in the statement. “From there the challenge spread to Fountain Powerboats, Cigarette Racing Team, Outerlimits Offshore Powerboats, DCB Performance Boats and even powerboating media outlet speedonthewater.com.”
