#RunWithAsics #RunTheSpiral - THE BIG IDEA

Asics had a slight concern and faced a challenge in strengthening the market share in South of India where as in North and West they are the number one shoe brand for Running. Both in terms of Market Share and Brand recall. Also thanks to the association with Tata Mumbai Marathon for over a decade. Down South they faced a stiff competition from Nike, Adidas and Decathlon as far as running is concerned. And also overall brand recall combining all sports.

For cricket Asics has signed up endorsement deals with Jasprit Bumrah and Bhuvaneshwar Kumar where they are doing fabulous both in IPL and at the Team India roles. Also the recent trial with players using batting and bowling shoes during IPL also did a good job in certain brand recall for Asics. And that’s how cricket works… Endorsement and visibility on-ground help. More screen presence is key in cricket.

But in a mass participative sport like Running, many marketing fundamentals don’t really work. People have strong influences and inclination towards brands. Coaches, expert runners play a major role in building up a brand skew in runners’ mind. Runners genuinely know that Asics is a runner focused brand.

What really required in Blore was a fan following for the brand Asics. Also we wanted to announce the arrival of Asics in Blore and also shout out loud the association with the World’s most popular 10k, ie TCSWorld10K, Bengaluru

With the team we have had a couple of presentation with Asics on 2-3 ideas related to an onground activity that is clearly out of the box and can become viral in no time. Also wanted to create conversations amongst the running community.

The image attached is from the powerpoint deck presented at Asics in the month of March. From there it was a mammoth task in hand to implement it as the idea was really worthy.

BIG IDEA – Making the running community draw the Asics logo (Asics Spiral) using their Running Apps. With the course expert of Procam, Ashay Sunbre, we have gone through some 55+ routes of Blore. But nothing really matched the idea as the routes weren't forming into the shape of Asics Spiral. Since Blore is a planned city with perfect main roads and cross roads, it was really tough to find the curves in the Asics Spiral. Then we thought of using a big group with flags fencing to draw the Asics logo. But that wasn’t so cool as an idea and felt the same is a forced fit.

Finally Cubbon Park and UB City came into our minds and we asked ourselves why don’t we draw Asics in the heart of the city itself than going to suburbs. We got the final route after so much of deliberations and in no time Asics approved the route. With immense support from the team that’s led by Aditi Parikh and Ashay himself, we have cracked the idea of an official Asics Spiral route in the heart of the city and we made 700 plus runners running the Spiral as a promo run to the TCSW10K. Olympian, Asia's fastest marathoner and Asics athlete, T. Gopi did the flag off along with Asics senior delegates. When they finished the practice run and looked at the their Stravas and Runkeepers we had a great sigh of relief and sense of pride on executing a big idea…

7500+ photographs got uploaded on various social media platforms. The cool idea of running Asics Spiral became the talk of the town and created a lot of conversations on Whatsapp runner group inboxes.

Asics Spiral was all over the social media for 2-3 days. With over a lakh impressions on digital post the event this one of its kind of Run became an instant hit in Bengaluru. What we have also noticed is, runners who have missed the Promo Run, ran the Asics Spiral route in the subsequent days and started posting their pics on social media showing their support.

Now we are in the process of establishing this as an official Asics Route globally and ensuring a lot of marketing activities would revolve around this through-out the calendar year, especially with the focus on footfalls to the Asics stores in Blore. #WinTheLongRun