| Title | SALOMON CITYTRAIL |
| Brand | SALOMON |
| Product/Service | CITYTRAIL |
| Category |
A04. USE OR INTEGRATION OF USER-GENERATED CONTENT |
|
Entrant Company
|
MNSTR Paris, FRANCE
|
|
Contributing Company
|
MNSTR Paris, FRANCE
|
Credits
| Bonichon Louis |
MNSTR |
Creative Director |
| Cheroux Mathieu |
MNSTR |
Art Director |
| Clerc Stéphane |
MNSTR |
Account Manager |
| Rose Jean Louis |
MNSTR |
Project Director |
| Mouradian Taline |
MNSTR |
Deputy Managing Director |
The Campaign
Brand entertainment plays an increasingly central role within sports marketing, where authenticity is core to success. At the core, audiences are demanding to be advertised to less, and involved and entertained more.
To leverage this, Salomon have created a brand content ecosystem, focused around Facebook & YouTube, reaching millions of runners each year with Salomon Running TV (currently in its third season) and with Kilian’s Quest, a video series based on the achievements of mountain runner Kilian Jornet, National Geographic Adventurer Of The Year in 2014.
There are no specific regulations about brand content, but it’s important to note that the campaign is truly global — with activations across 19 local markets.
Results
Salomon is the global benchmark for trail running — running in the natural surroundings.
For Salomon’s arrival within town and city running, we leveraged the brand’s challenger positioning. Where traditional brands focus on performance, we created an exploration-based running experience that seeks to reconnect inner-city people to nature.
To inspire this new practice, we launched the CITYTRAIL project: a co-creation project that invites runners around the world to map their city, according to their running trails.
To anchor the practice and recruit followers, we deployed an activation campaign that combined digital and grassroots activations — with the outputs being a series of global brand content.
The grassroots activity was built around Community Runs. Organized by distributors and led by a coach, these runs are an introduction to the practice, as well as opportunity to test products.
Each of these runs was a chance for our initial audience to try the products and the CITYTRAIL running experience –through its trails and spots.
This content is delivered through digital touch points (website, mobile, social media outlets) and is powered in real-time through the CITYTRAIL application. Here, we empower runners to follow their peers’ trails, and also take part in the project themselves, by adding new ‘spots’ and trails that continue to build the world’s running cartography.
Our plan connected digital and terrain activations, under a single call to action: to collaboratively map cities around the world, according to their running trails.
Like all authentic movements, we began locally; focusing on mobilizing influential communities of runners in cities such as London, Paris and Barcelona. Content from these key locations enabled us to build the first elements of the CITYTRAIL story online — which in turn inspired broader communities of runners to join the co-created project.
By behaving in this way, we delivered a truly integrated plan — with user-generated content build into its core.
Since launch in June 2014, we’ve activated CITYTRAIL across 19 countries.
Locally the brand has created in excess of 600 Community Runs, with over 7000 runners taking part in the project.
Online, content has reached in excess of 150 000 core runners in its first 3 months of activation.
The CITYTRAIL app, which allows users to create and browse CITYTRAIL content, has been downloaded nearly 50 000 times in those 3 months.
CITYTRAIL’s official brand content, which covers 145 cities with 179 official routes and over 3000 spots, is now being completed by users themselves as part of the ongoing CITYTRAIL project. More than 500 pieces of user generated content have been published so far, with each piece helping to connect the global community of runners.