I joined New Balance in January of 2011, near the beginning of a massive resurgence effort to try and make the brand younger.
My first 18 months I was tasked with making the brand relatable to teenage track and field athletes in the US market. We had recently acquired title sponsorship of two of the largest championship events, our budgets were aligned around making the most of those two events.
In my last six months I lead the marketing relationship with our largest e-commerce retailers in Amazon and Zappos. At that same time we were launching the 30th anniversary of one of our most popular styles and I was lucky to lead the creative efforts on that campaign.
Meet jerry
The 990 is New Balance's most storied style, hell Steve Jobs wore it, in 2012 we were releasing the 10 iteration on the 30th anniversary of its initial introduction. I lead creative direction for a targeted US campaign to bring attention to the "American Made" craftsmanship behind the 990. We shot with factory workers in New Balance owned factories in Maine to showcase their personal connection to making these shoes.
a more social track meet
Tasked with making a 100 year old brand younger and winning marketshare in one of the most competitive sporting verticals, we looked to create activations that exploited network effects. Partnering with our digital agency Almighty, we digitized a track meet, connecting every element athletes partake in to their social graph, sharing their achievements with friends and family across the internet.
Specifically for the New Balance Nationals events we created Facebook apps that connected the on-site event experience with athlete’s digital social graphs. The app projected athlete performances and activities out to friends and family; driving traffic back to our Facebook experience. This execution drove over 10,000 organic page ‘Likes’.
A great write up by our digital agency - Almighty - who helped conceptualize and build these executions: http://www.bealmighty.com/work/new-balance-nationals/
Facebook studios recognized our 2011 NB Facebook Activation: http://www.facebook-studio.com/gallery/#/gallery/submission/new-balance-nationals
The 2011 MITx awards nominated our program for “Best Social Influence” app: http://www.mitxawards.org/interactive/Finalists.aspx
It did not win, but the nomination contributed to New Balance winning “Interactive Marketer of the Year”.
The Digiday Sammy Award’s nominated our 2012 NB Nationals implementation for “Best Branded Social Community”: http://www.sammyawards.com/Finalists/
“ Observation from someone who knows the challenges of covering this meet inside and out: The integration of results, photos, videos, Facebook postings, FB wall comments, athlete activities outside of competition (like hanging with friends in Smilebooth etc) at this meet is LIGHT YEARS ahead of anything else being done out there related to track meets, or even, I’d venture, any major sporting event. Cutting edge. The trick you all pulled off, and I’m sure will to continue to refine, is that you broke down the wall between participant and audience– you wrap the athlete (and their fans, family, friends) in a 360-degree experience which projects that experience out to others, but also allows the athlete (and followers) to participate in the experience in real-time, to generate their own media as part of the experience, whether that’s through wall comments, photo uploads, Smilebooth, check-ins, link-sharing– whatever. No one else is doing that.”