An inventive Puma running campaign in Shanghai saw the sportswear giant invite residents to run through a mythical landscape in the form of an interactive experience.
The Chinese initiative, created in tandem with creative production house MediaMonks, was opened in one of the city centre’s busiest squares at the start of July and invited the city’s runners to test out the latest range of Puma running shoes and took the form of an interactive gaming experience.
The sports brand built a pop-up pavilion and invited the city’s residents inside to test the new Hybrid Astro by wearing it as they run through a Puma-inspired mythical world in the form of a customised avatar.
Instead of featuring leader boards and power-ups, this experience enables personalised avatars to run through three imaginary virtual worlds: a city, a floating island and a dense forest.
Indeed, the experience brought Puma’s spirit animal to life and allowed runners to become as lean and fast as a puma.
The idea was to promote the new product by creating a distinctive and fun experience that put technology front-and-centre with the objective of reminding consumers of the show technology itself
“Puma’s brief focused on the beauty and fun of ‘running your own way’, stripping away the competitive tone of most running campaigns. That freedom led to a truly engaging fantasy world for runners to just enjoy, channeling their run by becoming an ‘actual’ puma,” said Sanne Drogtrop, executive producer and head of production at MediaMonks Shanghai.
“It’s been great to work with the Puma team on bringing this innovative trialling experience to fruition! A great example of how technology enhances creativity.”
This pop-up participatory experience is just one strand of Puma’s umbrella Hybrid Astro campaign around the world: which also included a range of other innovative, local market initiatives such as teaming up with running crew Rundemental in Lisbon
and a vibes, music related campaign in the Middle East
and more tech-led video work with ambassador Virat Kohli in India.
Kohli also fronted the brand’s Cricket World Cup ‘’Sock Them’ campaign from 2017 (see case study).
Comment:
This certainly offers a different approach to try-before-you-buy and an alternative to the usual running training routines.
It reminds us a little of the more directly physical, Nike ‘Unlimited Stadium’ project (see case study).
Links:
Puma
https://www.youtube.com/user/puma
https://www.instagram.com/puma/
MediaMonks
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