How On united running culture and artistic creativity

Client

On

Services

Aspire Active
Aspire Live

Brief

Expand the brand presence into new verticals and creative communities.

During the build-up to the London Marathon 2021, we helped On to create a multi-day experience that brought together the best of running culture and artistic creativity. From building energy before the big day to chill-out vibes after the race, our event and engaging programming brought On’s “Point Two” mindset alive and opened up new creative opportunities for the brand.

Launching the brand into new verticals

On is a global brand with customers in more than 60 countries. The company is highly regarded in the performance running space and is increasingly recognised for its style and fashion credentials.

On is the chosen footwear for many runners and to celebrate the challenge of running a marathon, On introduced the Point2 campaign. A marathon is 26.2 miles or 42.2 kilometres and it’s the point-two that really matters. It’s the Point2 mindset that takes you that step further and motivates you to go the distance.

Our brief for the London Marathon 2021 was to bring London’s running and creative communities together for an engaging festival of events driven by culturally relevant partners.

We wanted to introduce visitors to the On vision and story, build credibility to create loyal customers and embed the brand in the minds of a new audience of connected runners, cultural innovators and tastemakers.

Our inspiring programme would also help secure media and influencer coverage and gain valuable exposure for On in the run up to the London Marathon.

“The ‘Point2’ concept is a celebration of the marathon mindset and running culture, expressed through artistic creativity.”

Hypebeast

Bringing together artists, creatives and runners

We developed a strategy to bring the Point2 experience to life from a memorable launch through to a curated programme of events with creative partners.

The Point2 experience ran from 30 September to 3 October 2021 at the Protein Studios, Shoreditch London.

Centred around an art installation by Lucy Hardcastle, the pop-up event invited artists, creatives and runners to experience the marathon mindset through art, movement and music.

Our initial task was to build hype. We pitched teaser content and an outline of the experience to key media and London titles to help drive people to attend the pop-up during the Marathon.

We also created a media strategy that seeded digital campaigns with high profile paid media partnerships to promote the Point2 experience. The digital activations ran for the duration of the Point2 event.

Ahead of the launch, we hosted a select group of relevant content creators to give them a taster of the pop-up experience and encourage content before the official launch party.

For the official launch event, we invited over 60 media, influencers and artists including journalists from titles such as Telegraph Style, The Evening Standard and Hypebeast.

We worked closely with selected partners throughout the activation to promote Point2, put on a programme of events and maintain buzz and engagement.

Strong media partnerships with Secret London, PAUSE, Dazed, The Guardian and ES Magazine targeted cultural innovators, tastemakers and the London mass-market. To wrap up the Point2 experience, we dedicated the final day to the London Marathon itself with a live screening of the race and rewards for finishers.

Driving pre-event awareness

16.8m

online readership

388k

estimated coverage views

1.5m

total social reach

Delivering positive impact for On

The Point2 experience was a hugely exciting project to work on where we brought together new and creative approaches for On in the UK market.

We successfully introduced the brand to cultural, fashion and lifestyle led communities while also retaining relevance to the core running audience.

Our partnerships generated significant media coverage. From 5 targeted online articles we gained an online readership of over 16 million and estimated coverage views of 388k. From the 100+ social mentions we achieved a reach of 1.5 million including paid posts from media partners and content creators.

Our media partnership with Secret London allowed us to target a wide audience of Londoners to build hype and awareness pre-event. Our collaboration delivered over 1.1m impressions, 4k engagements including over 1k hits to the website through Instagram stories alone. The activity was key to driving traffic to the campaign landing page.

Working with Dazed offered a great audience alignment. The editorial performance saw the time on page exceed the site average. And the paid print ads in The Guardian and ES Magazine reached high numbers of our target ABC1 audience.

Overall, the high performing campaign resulted in a big spike in website traffic and all events were booked up within the first few days of sale.

Our launch night social content from our selected content creators showcased and endorsed the event driving advocacy with runners, creatives and tastemakers.

The Point2 project, and the campaigns created around it, brought together running culture and artistic creativity in a beautiful combination, showcasing On and raising awareness for the brand at the right time.