Advertiser: ASICS
Agency: OMD SPAIN
Category: Other Consumer Products (including Durable Goods)
Producer: Eliana Tapia (OMD Spain)
Project Director: Laura Gómez (OMD Spain)
Account Director: Montse De La Paz (OMD Spain)
Strategy
In an Olympic year, and conscious of the tremendous investments that would be made by giants such as Adidas, Nike and Reebok, ASICS set some ambitious objectives for itself: to increase sales and reinforce by 75%, the brand’s position vis-à-vis the leaders in the Running Shoes and Premium-Running Shoe categories, along with upping its brand awareness and attitudinal equity levels by improving brand perception through the use of terms such as 'As True Sport' and 'As Leader'. While competitors were putting all their media stars on exhibit, an official study revealed that the number of active athletes had grown in Spain by 8% over the previous year; a trend that reached its maximum expression in the unstoppable rise in the level of participation in popular races and marathons. That was the response of a massive and anonymous target group who trained and competed solely for their own health and who merely hoped for some kind of recognition: they were individuals 'made of sports'.
Execution
Under the claim 'Made of Sports', we proposed the challenge of running a half-marathon (his first) to a well-known TV sports analyst. It was a challenge in which ASICS would be his inseparable traveling companion in an attempt to offer our protagonist and all his viewers a complete sporting experience. The entire training process generated a Brand Content multi-media platform -- 8 weeks of first-person experiences -- that allowed us to present, on Spanish TV’s main news program, the principal key image points of ASICS. The evolution of the process was followed in real-time on the TV channel’s website as well as on the social profile pages belonging to our star. With this type of 'socialization' of the challenge we were able to create a team of spontaneous brand ambassadors, a horde of volunteers who were convinced of the advantages of being 'made of sports' via the constant interaction they enjoyed with the protagonist.
Effectiveness
ASICS managed to double its brand awareness level and triple its brand image as true sport and as leader while registering a 110% increase in attitudinal equity. Regarding market data, the Running Shoes category grew 50% and the rate corresponding to Premium-Running Shoes (over 75€) grew by 72%. ASICS Web traffic grew by 13%, including many of the 64,000 followers/fans of the protagonist on Twitter and Facebook. And finally, ASICS managed to top off the challenge’s success by seeing its star actually finish his first half-marathon in the time of 1 hour, 58 minutes and 28 seconds.