Sam Pack Five Star Ford: Little Wishes with Big Heart to Help in the Community

With a promise to serve the greater good of our communities, TEGNA’s local stations and clients are no strangers to cause marketing. Trey Russell, General Manager of Sam Pack Five Star Ford in Carrollton, is one of the local businesses working with TEGNA’s WFAA to do just that. 

“These last two years, we’ve seen things that nobody has ever thought we’d have to go through, says Russell. “There’s been a lot of challenges, and people need help.”

“When we teamed up with WFAA on Little Wishes, the thought was, ‘How can we help the community?’” says Russell. “I think WFAA, TEGNA, and Sam Pack have the same values. We want to help the community. It’s not all about us just selling and servicing cars. It helps people in need who might be down on their luck a little, and if we help them a little, they can stand back up and get going with their lives.”

Building on a 20-year relationship with WFAA, Russell partnered with his most trusted advisors to sponsor a Little Wishes program. Sam Pack Ford can grant a Little Wish to someone in need as part of the program. In June of 2021, the auto group donated $3,000 in gift cards and a family trip to Six Flags to help out a woman named Deborah, who recently lost her mother and her husband, leaving her to be the sole provider for her family of four: her three granddaughters and her son with Cerebral Palsy. 

In another instance, Sam Pack gave a washer and dryer to a grandmother who was struggling to provide for her three granddaughters and was often unable to afford the price of doing laundry at the laundromat. 

“It’s probably every week that I get a phone call, a text, or somebody that watched Little Wishes, and they thank us. It’s good to know that other people get to see that we don’t do it for the publicity. We do it to help out our community, our fellow friends, our neighbors, and I think that’s what WFAA does as well.” 

Emily Holiday, Account Executive at WFAA, agrees and has received thoughtful and positive feedback. “One of the ladies wrote back to our community department and said, ‘I know that you call this campaign a little wish, but this little wish was a big wish to me,” Holiday recalls. “It’s great to see the Sam Pack Auto Group just really embrace the community like that.”

Sound Good? 

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