Salomon needs very little introduction within the outdoor industry and is recognised as a global leader in producing outdoor, progressive equipment across run, hike and alpine. They are consistently driven by passion, craftsmanship and their brand ethos; creating gear to enjoy and challenge in the great outdoors.
Since 1947 Salomon has stayed true to challenging the rules in a playful and light-hearted manner, whilst remaining focused and determined. A consistent desire to develop technologies alongside selected top athletes and the brand values reflected throughout the company has made it one of the longest serving iconic brands in the industry.
The Challenge
In Autumn 2016 Salomon approached Brandwave, they wanted to create a brand owned trail running event and pop-up shop to grow awareness of trail running as a sport in the UK. The campaign needed to inspire behavioural change by encouraging runners to take their run off-road, into nature and onto the trails. Salomon wanted to be positioned as the expert leader in the trail running industry and build upon their existing trail running community.
With these objectives in mind Brandwave broke down the brief to establish three key aspects to underpin the overarching strategy of the project:
Invite
Identify a whole new target audience, engage with them to encourage them to run off road, to take a step off the pavement and into nature.
Educate
Integral to initiating behavioural change; educating audiences on what trail running really is, where their local trail routes were and all the benefits of trail running.
Participate
Driving awareness, engaging with the new audience and encouraging them to get involved – attending the pop-up shop and signing up to the Salomon Sunset Series events.
The Result
Brandwave delivered The Salomon Sunset Series 2017 at four events; Leeds, Edinburgh, London, Bristol.
Consisting of 10km trail runs and providing a grass roots event that can be grown upon in the coming years. Carefully sourced strategic partnerships to grow the event infrastructure with Cliff Bar, Ordnance Survey and Blackroll encouraged participants to learn about trail running, tips, techniques, and training.
Each event was successfully run at the four locations, come rain or shine, with an 83% turnout rate
Participants left with a positive brand experience, educated on trail running and equipped to continue with the sport in the future
Salomon had a whole new audience to communicate with post the event and a great deal of insight into their audience
A hub for brand engagement
Prior to each event a pop-up shop in each of the event’s city centre locations was the perfect hub for brand engagement, education of trail running, event sign ups and product sales.
Brandwave sourced a 7.5 tonne lorry, designed a practical and experiential space, that consumers would feel comfortable entering, alongside project managing the build, execution and agenda of the eight week tour.
Perfect solution to access the city
With a total footfall across all locations of 1,295,177 the mobile pop-up shop was the perfect solution to access the city centre, discover further audiences and increase awareness of the Sunset Series Events.
Brandwave conceptualised competitions and activation pieces for data collection to ensure data was captured to grow the Salomon database. The pop-up shop is an asset that can be used and adapted for future events, tradeshows or activations in the years to come.
The digital campaign was pivotal in promoting brand and event awareness with Brandwave developing a fully integrated digital campaign including:
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Mobile optimised website with full event details, linked to sign-up system, pop-up shop journey, event imagery galleries, blogs and training plans.
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Social campaign ran across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for four months. Creation of all ad imagery, copy, management of audience profiling and ad spend. The campaign drove the target audiences to sign up to events, visit the pop-up shop and educated them on trail running.
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Email campaign working with online running publications to promote the series and trail running through their databases. Brandwave created all templates to ensure consistency across messaging and imagery.
“The Salomon Sunset Series was our first true omni channel campaign in the UK. The results speak for themselves with extremely high engagement levels and an all-round positivity, showcasing the brand to newcomers to trail running and moving the brand a giant leap forwards.
Delivering across all channels and platforms, the Brandwave team worked in synergy with us like an extension of our own in-house team. Their commitment to succeed was second to none and they really did go above and beyond what I have ever experienced with any other agency throughout my career.
Special thanks must go to our Account Director, Emma Cox who kept a cool head – whatever we threw at her – and most importantly, kept us on budget!”
Paul Griffiths
SALOMON BRAND MANAGER
All photos and video ©Globalshots
