DICK’S SPORTING GOODS 2016 RUNNER UP - BEST ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY

IDEASCALE

DICK’S Sporting Goods was founded in 1948 and continues to be a family run business today with over 500 stores nationwide. Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. is an authentic full-line sporting goods retailer offering a broad assortment of brand name sporting goods equipment, apparel and footwear in a specialty store environment. The Company owns and operates Golf Galaxy, LLC, a golf specialty retailer and eCommerce websites and catalog operations for both Dick's Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy.

In an effort to stay ahead of the curve when developing new products, Dick’s Sporting Goods wanted to introduce and develop a community for “Open Innovation” within Dick’s Sporting Goods. In order to do this, they created the “Concept Locker” which allows employees who have a DSG email address to submit product ideas, comment on submitted concepts and win rewards for their participation.

The initial program goals were to have a 10% commitment for participation from hard lines PD team members and 10% total adoption and active participation from store support center (home office) employees which accounts for approximately 2,000 people.

The goal of the first campaign was to get as many SSC employees to sign up for Concept Locker in a 2-hour period. The marketing plan for Concept Locker spanned from just over a month from 21 April 2016 to 27 May 2016.

The marketing launch plan included • a banner on the DSGN intranet and in the weekly company newsletter with an invitation

to sign-up • in-person information tables near the home office cafeteria (tabletops included a looped

video, five laptops for signing up, and DSG team members offering SWAG to participants) • a Concept Locker promotional video which played on all corporate TVs • Concept Locker SWAG: water bottles, notepads, pens • Emails to employees • Event promotion

People from all areas of the company became excited about signing up and contributing to the initial challenge question: 'I wish I had {blank} to help me with {blank}' with a focus on anything sporting goods related.

Here is an excerpt from a sample email provided by Dick’s Sporting Goods:

2IdeaScale Case Studies

Dick’s Sporting GoodsLooking to Employees for Product Open Innovation

On behalf of Concept Locker, Thank You for making our 1st week a HUGE success.

As of date, we have over 436 users signed up, 29 ideas posted and over 120 votes.

Some of the TOP VOTED ideas around the hardlines challenge I WISH I HAD {blank} to HELP ME WITH {blank} are:

• ReBarks - Shoes for Dogs • I wish I had a bug free camp table to help me eat in peace • I wish I had a pressure release target to help me pull out my arrows. • I wish I had a device that gave me feedback on my lifting form

The challenge is still live and you’re able to submit more than 1 idea so keep them coming!

To receive updates on ideas you’ve submitted, voted on, have comments or want to stay in the loop, add your email address under your profile. A tutorial is attached on how to add your email address to your profile.

Keep the ideas flowing, the votes coming and make this a successful community for new ideas at Dick's Sporting Goods. We can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Every idea received a comment and a vote from the moderator/administrator. The moderator encouraged thinking and more exploring of an idea if it was vague which seemed to promote other people commenting.

The initial target for the first day was to have at least 150 employees sign up in the town hall event, Dick’s Sporting Goods far surpassed that number with 306 users and 14 submissions. At the end of the challenge which was 3 weeks, Dicks’ Sporting Goods reported 533 employees signed up and 66 idea submissions.

“As a team, we were blown away by the response from employees,” said Kimberly Bikowski, Product Development Innovator at Dick’s Sporting Goods, “After our first challenge closed, people who were in the top 5 received a $25 gift card to a place of their choice which was announced. This type of low investment hype was what started other people asking when the next challenge would occur. We just completed our second challenge and went from 533 users to 747 users and ended with 58 unique concepts.”