The second half of January saw sportswear and lifestyle brand Saucony launch ‘The Marathumb Challenge’: a digital-to-physical initiative aimed at incentivising people to run distances that match how far their scroll on their phone – and promote the brand’s new Ride 17 Sneakers.
The campaign was a response to a recent ‘rising screen time’ study, carried out with market research company HarrisX, which found that the average adult annually scrolls on their phone an equivalent distance to three marathons – just over 78 miles.
Saucony’s response to tackle this level of physical inactivity was to work with agency Doner (Detroit) and other partners such as South London social enterprise High Achievers Lab (which, amongst other things, uses running as way to improve the physical and mental toughness of its community) to create a weekly running initiative challenging people to beat the distance they have scrolled.
The challenge is built around an app that calculates how far each users scrolls on their phones and then challenges them to run the equivalent distance. To take up the challenge, users simply need to download the app: which works slightly differently for Android and iOS users in the way it assesses screen time metrics against stepping distance for the former and measures steps against the average national distance scrolled for people on iOS devices.
Participation is inventivised by rewarding those who monitor their progress, outrun their scrolling distance and tag Saucony when socially sharing their results can redeem branded merchandise.
The initiative will run for six weeks: with the first weekly challenge beginning on 22 January 2024 to leverage the launch of Saucony’s new Ride 17 Sneakers.
The participatory campaign was promoted through a global integrated campaign spanning digital, social, eCommence, retail and OOH channels which rolled out from 19 January led by video content driving people to the site and app download.
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“Every facet of this campaign was created with great intention, including its timing. We understand the energy around resolutions and the new year, and we’re tapping into that dynamic to get people moving their feet more than they scroll for a more balanced lifestyle,” said Saucony CMO Kathryn Pratt.
‘The campaign simply and directly it taps into a powerful strategic insight, that people should spend more time moving and less time scrolling,’ Pratt added.
Outcome
Agency Doner (Detroit) reported that the early campaign outcomes were positive: the incentive generated a 140% increase in earned media, with social media engagement 37% higher than the benchmark in the first 72 hours post launch which helped drive a 25% increase in new users on the website, 19% more product landing page traffic compared to the week prior and a 14% increase in the sell-through rate on saucony.com.
This is a personalised physical challenge to beat a digital algorithm: driving awareness of the dreaded doom scrolling and turning it into something positively healthy via an engaging and socially shareable challenge inventivised by rationality, emotion and product.
While appealing to regular runners and the health conscience, it also has an element of gamification and personalisation.
Plus it might keep people running with the brand and shift some extra pairs of Saucony’s new Ride 17 Sneakers.
A fresh approach to the familiar brand backed New Year health and exercise resolutions for which January is so famous.