WHAMMO! BATKID SAVES CITY!

 

It’s not even my turn to blog, but breaking news waits for no-one. Quick! To the batcave!

KA-POW!

As I am sure most, if not all, of you all know by now, last Friday saw San Francisco transformed into Gotham City by the Bay so that the Make-a-Wish Foundation could help 5 year old Leukemia survivor Miles Scott become a real-life superhero - BatKid. Whilst we can sometimes feel trapped by the humdrum monotony of daily life, organizations like Make-a-Wish are changing lives on a daily basis. On Friday, they didn’t just change the life of Miles and his family – they changed an entire city.

Not content with simply hosting an event that would make Miles’ dreams come true, San Francisco took November 15^th, 2013 and went utterly, utterly BatKid bonkers.

BOOM!

Our intrepid hero was lured to the city with the pretense that he was going to buy his own BatKid costume, only to discover the very next morning that San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr had issued an urgent appeal requesting the help of Batman and BatKid. During his televised plea (yes, really), Suhr outlined the terror currently being spread by those dastardly villians The Riddler and The Penguin. In his batmobile Lamborghini (complete with booster seat, perhaps a first for a Lamborghini), our young superhero headed to Nob Hill where a damsel in distress had been tied up on the San Francisco cable car tracks to what looked suspiciously like a bomb placed by The Riddler. Undeterred, BatKid was able to disarm the device and rescue the clearly traumatized, yet grateful, victim. Without time to pause for breath, news broke that The Riddler was attempting to rob a downtown vault. Back into the batmobile went BatKid, ultimately outsmarting and cornering The Riddler in a cell, enabling San Francisco’s finest to haul him away in handcuffs. After all of that excitement, there was only one thing left to do.

Lunch.

But, as Miles was quickly discovering, a superhero’s work is never done and a flashmob in Union Square pleaded for yet more help from BatKid. This time it was the criminal mastermind The Penguin! Taking the San Francisco Giants mascot, Lou Seal, hostage The Penguin set off for his secret hideout with BatKid in hot pursuit. Fortunately, BatKid was able to track him down, apprehend the suspect and rescue Lou, who had been tied up in a cage at AT&T Park.

BAM!

Only four days after the event, a quick Google search of “BatKid” yields  10,220,000,000 results. Inspired by the official hashtag of the event, #SFBatKid, twitter reported up to 400 BatKid tweets per minute on Friday afternoon.

400. Per. Minute.

As Miles raced across the city from adventure to adventure, 377,048 unique twitter users used either the #SFBatKid or #BatKid hashtag (as of Sunday, the hashtags had been used 662,708 times on twitter and 16, 509 times to tag Instagram pictures and he was even mentioned in 117 countries. More stats here. Furthermore, the Make-a-Wish website crashed due to the volume of traffic (to stick with the over period-ed time references, www.wish.org was receiving 1,000 hits per second. 1000. Per. Second.) President Obama sent a vine video message to show his support and big-screen Batmen Michael Keaton, Christian Bale and Ben Affleck all showed their appreciation for Miles’ heroics. (This was particularly touching coming from Affleck who has drawn criticism for being cast as the latest caped crusader and was the gist of numerous internet memes suggesting Miles might have actually been a better choice than Affleck anyway.)

BANG!

But it wasn’t just online. At 2pm a number of Saatchi & Saatchi S team members, myself included, joined an estimated at 20,000 (Twenty. Thousand. I know, I know…..) people in a rally to honor BatKid at San Francisco City Hall. Children and pets were dressed as superheroes, signs filled the crowd and even official BatKid tshirts were sold by the Police Department. There, in the middle of Gotham City by the Bay, Miles was cheered, celebrated, thanked and even provided with the key to the city on what will forever be known, officially, as BatKid Day.

WHAM!

So what was it about Miles Scott and his desire to be a superhero for a day that inspired an outpouring of such emotion? Ultimately, I think we all feel an affinity with superheroes. They provide us comfort, protection and the reassurance that good can triumph over evil. In many respects, Miles Scott is the perfect parallel, having overcome Leukemia, but there’s more to it than that. Make-a-Wish grants approximately 14,000 wishes a year and yet none have been quite like this. Was it just the combination of the perfect weather (it was lovely) on the perfect day (a Friday in mid-November) in the perfect city (no brainer….) for such a perfect event? Was it simply Miles’ cheeky smile in his Batman costume that accompanies his page on the Make-a-Wish site?

I think it was something far deeper than that. Something more personal and something innate. We all want to believe in something, be part of something bigger than ourselves and ultimately we all yearn for fulfillment. I blogged last week about the importance of purpose, but what BatKid provided was a common connection to fulfill that internal void that I’m sure we all feel at some point. BatKid not only allowed us an opportunity to participate in something simply because we wanted to do the right thing, because we wanted to help and we wanted to smile, but he also provided a renewed sense of community. Of belonging.  And, most importantly, of hope. If BatKid can capture The Riddler, apprehend The Joker, save Lou Seal, protect the city and still have time for lunch and beating Leukemia, then maybe we can all find a few minutes to remind ourselves what’s important in life.

Thank you BatKid. Not only for saving our city, but helping us to save ourselves.

POW!

“It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.” - Batman