Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
Hello.
We’re Stacey Howe & Ian Fitzpatrick.
From New Balance & Almighty.
OUR STORY
We’re here because our
teams built the first national
championship event to play
out live in social channels.
It’s a really good story.
OUR STORY
You almost never get to
watch brand perceptions
change right in front of you.
How could we take ownership of a premiere event from Nike, and build
brand awareness & sentiment among an audience we can’t directly market to?
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
How could we continue to drive strong associations between the New Balance
brand and technology - and raise the bar for ourselves in the process?
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
EXECUTION
We let every athlete connect
their bib # to their Facebook
profile, and set some simple
rules.
EXECUTION
For three days, everything they
did on the track found its way to
the people who care the most
about them.
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
EXECUTION
We connected start times and
start lists to trigger posts
notifying athletes’ networks
minutes before they would
appear on the live stream.
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
EXECUTION
We tagged athletes’ finish
photos, SmileBooth photos and
race videos, so that their
networks could share the
experience.
EXECUTION
We posted their results to their
streams in real-time.
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
EXECUTION
And we built profile pages that
contained all their content,
across multiple meets, that they
can access anytime.
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
EXECUTION
Our role was to amplify what
these athletes already do, not to
change their behavior.
EXECUTION
This kind of
engagement and
production requires
ongoing
management and
facilitation.
EXECUTION
Kids will connect, but they need
a compelling reason to do it.
RESULTS
We’ve done this together four
times:
Twice indoors, Twice outdoors.
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
OUTDOORS: GREENSBORO, NC
INDOORS: NEW YORK, NY
RESULTS
With 3000 athletes competing
over 3 days, we average:
137k page visits to the Facebook page
233k photo views
40k event video views
5000 photos in our Smilebooth
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
RESULTS
In the first 12 months after our
first Nationals activation: More
than 35,000 new likes of the
page and a seeds of a small
community that will help to
launch a larger one.
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit
RESULTS
By creating content for both
athletes and their families &
friends at home, we added value
for both participant & spectator.
RESULTS
The success of this event is
about the athlete as
participant in a social
experience, not just the
audience or a source of
content.
“An observation from someone who knows the challenges of covering this
meet inside and out: The integration of results, photos, videos, Facebook
postings, FB wall comments, athlete activities outside of competition (like
hanging with friends in Smilebooth etc) at this meet is light years ahead
of anything else being done out there related to track meets, or even, I'd
venture, any major sporting event. Cutting edge. Credit to New Balance
for creating a 360-degree experience that sets the bar. This story should
be a must-read for the USATF and others.”
- Dave Devine, former editor of ESPN DyeStat and USATF official
RESULTS
We were able to acquire
ownership of the overall event
footprint, not just the venue.
RESULTS
We set out to elevate the value
of participation. The athletes
ran with it, adding value to
the brand story.
Almighty + New Balance / 2012 Digiday Brand
Summit