Tuomas Vohlonen, a Finnish adventurer, founded Suunto over 80 years ago in 1936. Unsatisfied with the technology available at the time, he was inspired to rethink and ultimately revolutionise navigational equipment.
Building on this heritage and their forward-thinking design ethos, innovation has been part of Suunto’s DNA ever since. It’s this approach which now enables them to create sports watches, dive computers and instruments that are relied upon by adventurers all over the globe.
The Challenge
Suunto released their latest and first ever smartwatch; the Suunto 7 to complete their product family.
Building on the key campaign message of ‘Sports and Life, Combined’, Brandwave were challenged to conceptualise and deliver the UK launch event.
Our brief was to break the mould of a typical product launch. To deliver a premium, exclusive experience for UK influencers and media. We needed to affirm Suunto’s position in the smartwatch world and achieve a KPI reach of 5 million+ across social.
The Result
For a brand with such heritage in timekeeping and navigation, Greenwich, the home of time itself, was a natural place to host our launch in London.
Knowing our influencers, we wanted to provide them with a multi-levelled experience that exceeded expectations. To begin, a lenticular style invite was created to bring the key campaign message to life.
Our guests were invited down to meet at our tech bus, the first of many activation touch-points in their product experience evening. Within, they received their watch and our team were on hand to help everyone get set-up.
Next on the agenda was a warm-up session under the River Thames in the Greenwich foot tunnel. A location that takes thousands of people towards and away from the city everyday, the tunnel helped to further convey our key campaign message. Wrapped in a treescape graphic, we immersed our guests in a hint of life outside of the city whilst they tracked heart rate and got to know the new watch functions, providing opportunity for fantastic UGC.
Partnered up with our run leaders, our guests were then taken on a light jog around Greenwich to further demo the Suunto 7’s capabilities before ending up at the final location for the remainder of the evening.
After sampling some of Finland’s finest food and drink, we were joined by the inspirational John McAvoy. A strong advocate and believer in sport being a catalyst for positive change, guests were able to listen first hand to his incredible journey and story; from behind iron bars to Ironman.
Key Social Media Metrics
15318391
OVERALL REACH
15298600
TOTAL TARGETED REACH
11791
ESTIMATED PUBLIC REACH
8000
ESTIMATED REACH VIA FOOTFALL
“As a new brand to the smartwatch market, we really wanted to push boundaries and showcase the Suunto brand in a way that would excite this ‘new’ audience with a subtle nod to our Finnish heritage.
Brandwave created an excellent, thought out execution which helped us to engage and excite influencers and media. This event created an amazing Suunto brand experience in London and the achieved results speak for themselves.”
Sarina Pietrosanti
Suunto UK Marketing
