This campaign was awarded the Silver Stevie American Business Award and Best In-Person Content Marketing Strategy for the Content Marketing Awards.
As the official apparel sponsor of the 2015 TCS New York City Marathon, ASICS challenged Red Door Interactive to elevate the awareness of its brand around the event. For this initiative, Red Door devised a plan that would allow ASICS to not only better engage with the online running community as a whole, but to also do so in a personal and authentic fashion.
Influencers:
Red Door began by identifying and compiling a list of influential bloggers within the running community. Five of these select bloggers were then offered the chance to work with legendary track and field coach, Andrew Kastor, a customized 12-week training program, a wide range of ASICS products and an opportunity to run in the 2015 NYC Marathon. As part of this experience, the bloggers were asked to wear a GoPro camera when training, allowing them capture, document and share their grueling endeavor from start to finish. The footage was then developed into a five-part “webisode” series titled 5 To The Finish Line and shared by the bloggers and on ASICS social platforms in near realtime.
With its approach, Red Door captured a more personal side of the ASICS brand, allowing them to engage with their audience using real-time storytelling and with a wide range of perspectives; not just brand messaging. In addition, ASICS was able to develop a meaningful relationship with the run-blogging community, increase blogger-generated content about ASICS products and the 2015 NYC Marathon, and also gained quality inbound links back to asicsamerica.com, improving site rankings in search results.
Interactive Sign Generator:
In an effort to better include race day supporters and bridge the online/offline gap, Red Door created an interactive “Race Day Sign Generator” landing page, where users could create and share their customized race day sign. The sign generator was designed in a fully interactive and customizable fashion. Made complete with 50 unique sign sayings — each crowd sourced from ASICS fans, the sign generator also featured three background choices as well as three custom text color options. This allowed users to create, fun ASICS branded race day sign made just for them; a creative first for any major marathon sponsor. The landing page also featured a user friendly layout which incorporated built-in social sharing elements, helping motivate users to share their sign across various social platforms. Additionally, the most popular sign sayings were printed and handed out to the crowd on race day, allowing our on the ground film and social media crews to document the experience.
Interested in seeing the results of this campaign? Check out the video below or browse the #GoRunIt hashtag here.