At Runaway, your efforts to become a marathoner will be rewarded!

Already sporty, why don’t you get back to running and give you the means to meet a new challenge? To help you get back to the regular training required to successfully complete your challenge, the New Balance sports brand will accompany and encourage you.

How? By opening an ephemeral bar under the name “The Runaway” and associating with the “sporty” social network Strava, which means in Swedish “strive to do something relentlessly”. The more you run, the more your Strava app will record the number of miles flown and the more you’ll get the chance to get a cold beer to get you back to the Runaway Bar!

For this, it was only necessary (the operation ended at the end of the London Marathon on April 28) to join the “Strava challenge” on the social application.
Users were then offered a “Runaway” card. Sort of virtual wallet, the card was automatically filled with miles traveled.

These miles were used as bargaining chips to pay you pints in the pub. Thus, 4 challenges were proposed on different dates. The 100% success at each challenge entitles you to 3 beers for you and one for a friend. To stay in the theme and feel good, on the ground floor, a gym and dumbbells were also available … in order to continue your training or … to eliminate!

For Samantha Matthews, Senior Marketing Manager at New Balance UK & Ireland, the opening of the New Balance Pub reinforces their 120-day “Everybody’s Race” campaign to motivate and advise on how best to prepare for the London’s Marathon of which New Balance is of course sponsor.
The physical place aims to “provide an escape and reward when needed, as well as a hub for the runners community to support and to support each other”. In addition, the sports brand is also launching on this occasion a limited edition of its model of sneaker “New Balance 1500 LDN” to definitely make of this moment an unforgettable EXPERIENCE in the eyes of the participants.

In fact, the purpose of the Strava application is to bring traffic to the place of consumption with the indirect benefit of recruiting or retaining new customers for the sports brand, based on the reputation of the Strava social network.

The place Runaway then takes over: on-site, beers of course but also friendly atmosphere with darts, gym, locker rooms and lockers, everything is done to promote SOCIALIZATION and active support between members of this community created at the occasion of a major sporting event. In short, the emotional touch is there to sustainably engage the consumer with the brand.

Finally, back on the application Strava: once the Marathon is over, New Balance can continue to animate the members of the enriched community “New Balance Run Club”.
By relying on the EXPERIENCE and CONNECTION consumption drivers, the brand supports its consumers in their REALIZATION goal: to succeed in their marathon.

Brands can therefore continue to rely on key events in consumer life to federate their customers over the long term. But this “community” commitment can also be ephemeral, simple, close to the citizen, even unexpected. We remember, for example, the Brazilian beer brand BOA, which federated at the time of the Rio Carnival throught an intermediation platform connecting neighborhood residents with the participants in the festivities to enable them to access the closest toilets easily and quickly !