Title	BLACKOUT TRACK
Brand	ASICS
Product/Service	GEL-KAYANO 25 RUNNING SHOE
Category	B02. Talent: Live Experience
Entrant	EDELMAN London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	EDELMAN London, UNITED KINGDOM
PR	EDELMAN London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	UNIT9 London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Jamie Cordwell	Edelman	Creative Director
Anuj Shah	Edelman	Copywriter
Denesh Agnihotri	Edelman	Art Director
Waiming Wee	Edelman	Producer
Mattias Ronge	Edelman	Executive Creative Director
Lucy Melling	Edelman	Managing Director
Emma Zadravetz	Edelman	Project Manager
James Murray	UNIT9	Executive Producer
Ulla Winkler	UNIT9	Executive Producer
Sean Pruen	UNIT9	Director
Jade Alexander	UNIT9	Producer
Frazer Howie	UNIT9	Art Director
Natalie Steiner	UNIT9	Production Manager
Simon Little	UNIT9	Sound Design
Greg & Jacob	UNIT9	Film Director
Harry Starkey-Midha	UNIT9	Film Producer
James Donovan	Edelman	Agency Team
Harriet Persse	Edelman	Agency Team
Tiernan Silcok	Edelman	Agency Team
Zarren Siddiqui	Edelman	Agency Team
Harriet Muddiman	Edelman	Agency Team
Alex Cobb	Edelman	Agency Team
Jack Hancock	Edelman	Agency Team
Stefan Ronge	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	CCO

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

Blackout Track is the world’s first running track for the mind. We created a live sport experience like no other, and then leveraged the experience to create unskippable live, film and social content for the running community, communicating the ASICS brand message in truly innovative way. Having invited journalists, talent and influencers to run the track and set the content free on social, we then developed a Runkeeper app Blackout edition, which took the activation off the track and put it in the hands of every runner - impacting running culture at large. Global reach= +2.2BN , sales increase =125%.

Background

Situation ASICS used to be the only running shoe brand that was devoted to innovation. Nowadays all big shoe brands talk about the technology in their shoes, in similar voices, demonstrating what it does for a runner’s body. Brief ASICS – an acronym for a sound mind in a sound body – asked us to launch the new shoe GEL-KAYANO 25, a shoe packed with technology, but not hugely different from GEL-KAYANO 24. Objectives 10 percent sales increase compared to last year’s model GEL-KAYANO 24 (similar budget) Engage and intrigue runner community online. 150 million in earned media coverage

Describe the creative idea

Insight The ASICS GEL-KAYANO 25 is a running shoe so advanced, that the only thing holding runners back is their minds. While Fitbits, music and scenery pamper the mind, inadvertently making it more injury prone, ASICS believes in strengthening it. What if we could find a way to highlight this fact to the running world, making them look at their mind as a runners' muscle and putting our shoe at the center of the conversation? Creative Idea Blackout Track. We built the world’s first runner’s track to train the mind. Together with sport scientists, we constructed an indoor track with no music - pink noise speakers to create an audio vacuum, no tech - removed with metal detectors, no scenery, no starting-line and no finish line. Journalists, influencers and talent lined up to take part in the experience and to help us spread our message over the world.

Describe the strategy

Most runner shoe brands focus on helping bodies to move faster. To use our Japanese heritage – ASICS is an acronym for a sound mind in a sound body – and start an emotionally relatable conversation on long distance running, we wanted to highlight that running is a mental sport. Because when you have the best shoes, it is the mind that will hold you back. So what if runners should train their minds and not only their bodies? Approach Together with sport scientists we built a 150M runner’s track to train the mind. We handpicked the right journalists, influencers and talent from markets all over the world. We secured own production on the site, making sure that we had content production throughout the experiment. We even set out to find out how much of the speed that could be attributed to the mind (around 5%).

Describe the execution

The track ran for 4 days. Journalists, influencers and talent in turn ran the ASICS Blackout Track, - making it a very personal live experience. We had a partly prerecorded launch film ready for release on day 1, together with press material, high res images and ongoing content with our running influencers and talent. Additionally, our professor designed a scientific experiment to measure how big the impact of the mind is when running, by testing runners with and without distractions. Results of the experiment were released a couple of weeks after the live event, proving that the mind accounts for 5 percent of performance on tracks. So that anyone in the world could try a blackout run, we introduced a Blackout Edition in Runkeeper, turning off music and notifications. The track was the entertaining engine for the whole campaign, powerful enough to drive advertising, in store, digital, social.

Describe the outcome

Blackout Track was ASICS’ most successful shoe launch of all time. Glance: - Sales Increase: 125% (Target =10% increase, compared with the 2017 shoe launch ) - Earned Reach: 2.2 Billion (Target = 150 Million) - Runkeeper Blackout Edition App: 170,000 Downloads Full: Journalists, influencers, runners and Internet at large loved the track, and we counted an earned reach of 2.2 billion. In many places, including Sky News live, the ASICS brand promise of a Sound Mind in a Sound Body was explicitly called out. The Blackout edition in Runkeeper was downloaded 170 000+ times in one week, globally. After massive uptake, it's now a permanent feature in the app. Online awareness and engagement in the campaign idea, had direct sales impact. Without any ground breaking new features, or larger budget, the sales went up by 125 percent for GEL-KAYANO 25, compared to GEL-KAYANO 24 launched the year before.