NEW BALANCE
Social media campaign activation
SUCCESS STORY
New Balance launched a fully integrated campaign over the 120 days leading up to the London Marathon which resulted in social media year-on-year increases of 4x impressions, 5x interactions as well as 40,000 new Instagram followers.
400%
YOY increase in impressions
5X
YOY increase in engagement
40k
new organic instagram followers
THE STORY
The 2019 Virgin Money London Marathon welcomed New Balance for the second of their ten-year partnership as official footwear and apparel sponsor. Set to be the biggest London Marathon ever with charity fundraising tipped to break the £1billion mark, 2019 was a big opportunity for New Balance to cement the brand as a category leader.
Following a successful first year, the brand goal in 2019 was to further leverage the official brand partnership opportunities to strengthen and cultivate long-lasting consumer relationships and drive brand affinity in the UK.
THE GOAL
The London Marathon has huge cultural currency across the globe and shares many of the values that live at the heart of New Balance; heritage, community, inclusivity and diversity. It was important for New Balance to create a campaign that celebrates and amplifies these values through accessible channels.
120 days created by VMLY&R put the days leading up to the Marathon into the spotlight, because the journey starts long before the start line. The campaign gave New Balance a rich storytelling thread that would be activated across digital, social, OOH, print, PR and experiential.
THE SOLUTION
Guiding the path to purchase
Bridge & Tunnel were briefed to develop a social media content strategy that amplified the campaign story of 120 days and engaged a highly targeted audience of London Marathon runners across the UK. With the objective of increasing brand affinity and establishing greater authority and trust amongst this highly targeted audience, our content was optimised for engagement & consideration with commercial opportunities woven in where we were able to drive more chances for conversion.
Tapping into insights around how runners plan their Marathon training and leveraging key moments in the running calendar we developed a multi-channel content and engagement plan designed to demonstrate New Balance’s commitment to providing valuable training support to all runners.
We worked with the campaign’s five ambassadors to create a weekly series that shared key moments and milestones during their training journey. This episodic content was distributed through Instagram stories, reaching our most engaged audience with (close to) real-time and relevant content that felt contextually relevant to the platform format.
Our social coach series, hosted by Team NB athletes and coaches, gave the brand an opportunity to share valuable training advice through recognised, professional figures. We designed the series to be as easily accessible as possible and to provide runners unable to attend London training events to get expert running advice. Using the Q&A functionality on Instagram Stories we opened up direct and immediate channels of conversation between the consumer and the brand.
For 120 days we followed the journeys of the running community on Instagram and initiated a community engagement program that saw us start conversations with over 800 UK runners.
THE RESULTS
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8.6m social media impressions - up 400% YoY
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290,000 social media interactions - up 500% YoY
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Over 40,000 new Instagram followers
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6,400 organic website sessions
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4,450 content saves and shares
