Above Parkour athlete Lynn Jung is shown lacing up a pair of Saucony kicks.
Source: takeover – Page 1 – Saucony Stories
I have continued to refer to the Saucony Originators campaign as a sign of all that is wrong with the sneaker marketing industry. The influencer based Originators saw ten sneakerheads launch 100 pair of their own designs with Saucony.
Not one woman in the group. Not 1…
The unintended implication is that women aren’t Originators. The real problem is that the sneakerheads utilized are either Jordan/Nike or adidas heads first and that is the underlying problem with collabs. They create bumps in interest as opposed to a more consistent roll out of content by brands.
The Takeover is one part podcast, one part video, all parts social media content creation that allows one of Saucony’s athletes/influencers to takeover their Instagram account and give you an all access look into a day in the life.
In the last year I’ve stated that marketing has to be more organic for brands. I also stressed the importance of long term goals vs short term spikes in interest. This campaign is exactly the remedy needed to craft a narrative around the brand. The problem however is that #takeover doesn’t show up anywhere on the brand’s site/splash page. There isn’t a pinned tweet. On Facebook the focus is on the Run Your World campaign, but the takeover which is a more active campaign is relegated to Instagram only. This isn’t a big deal, but #takeover should definitely be placed everywhere and also uploaded to YouTube to take advantage of the cross platform marketing opportunities.
Use the source link above to view each takeover. 3 out of 10 are women… much better than the Originators campaign, much better.
