To celebrate the launch of the new VECTIV™ footwear, The North Face partnered with Strava to inspire runners (in lockdown) to once again feel the competitive edge and push their limits by allowing them the chance to safely compete against thousands of others.
Well-trodden segments in Berlin, London, Paris, Milan and Barcelona were chosen with FKT’s (Fastest Known Times) up for grabs, as well as an overall incentive to run 100K in one month.
Every runner who clocked 100K on the Strava app was entered into a prize draw where they could win bundles of The North Face run gear and VECTIV™ footwear. The ultimate prize was a trail running weekend in the Alps, with a member of The North Face Athletes team.
The North Face challenged us to create a multi-channel campaign in 4 languages across 6 countries. The campaign needed to resonate with their core trail running audience and create an authentic connection through running.
We commissioned production duo Autobahn to create a video that focused on various trail runners and what running means to them. Produced in 4 languages, it laid the foundations for our more granular and targeted campaign.
We worked alongside The North Face and Strava, to create a campaign that stretched from overall awareness and localised social media promotion, to onboarding from the The North Face website and in-app assets for Strava.
Partnering with Strava, the leading running app, didn’t just make sense for the North Face as a brand, but also gave us real world data on our audience.
Identifying where people run, meant we could support individual FKT challenges with a localised outdoor digital campaign. We linked in-app times from Strava with digital OOH screens, updating the screens each time a new FKT was posted.
Our campaign gained over 59M impressions, with a distinct athlete reach of 5.5M. Over 500K athletes took part, and 55% completed the challenge, running or hiking a staggering 37.3M miles in total
The campaign received Gold at the World Media Awards.
The FKT challenges were further boosted with localised murals, billboards, posters and banners. increasing awareness of the campaign, and making the brand a physical part of the challenge.