The Uphill Struggle Of A Lockdown Launch
Remember Lockdown 1.0? Riding high having reclaimed our commuting time, relishing the weekly zoom quiz with the family- a time when everything still felt like a novelty.
If you cast your mind back, as self-improvement saints sung from their soapboxes, most brands backed up and awaited clarity on how to navigate a global pandemic, which reasonable response given the gravity of it. Some brands embraced the ‘new normal’ (sorry), but it took most a lot longer to work out where they fit in a locked down landscape.
Now, a whole year later, brands and their marketing activities are very much back in swing of things. For running brands, while 2020 saw a rise in mileage from runners, usual marketing opportunities in-store and at races are still on hold, and will continue to be for at least the next couple of months, opening the door to alternative activations for product launches.
Setting the pace for the past month, The North Face have launched the ‘VECTIV trail shoe’. It of course boasts a carbon plate (is it even a running shoe if it doesn’t have a carbon plate these days?), a rocker midsole to propel athletes forward, and a Surface CTRL Grip outsole. The North Face call it the ‘Future of Trail’.
To market the shoe, The North Face have tapped into a series of COVID-influenced trends that still offer the vibrance of the trail running community but also champion outdoor activity despite the fact, in many countries, we still can’t run together.
A Rise in Running
From March last year, Strava saw activity rise, a lot. Perhaps caused by the the thirst for self-improvement that we all felt when every other person told you that Shakespeare wrote King Lear in a lockdown, but more likely, exercise was our only opportunity for a little freedom in the day, and many simply capitalised on that hour. With this, Strava became a bit of a humblebrag hotbed driving a rise in challenges such as the Run 5, Nominate 5, Donate 5 for the NHS.
One year on and Strava Challenges are becoming more and more popular. And so to The North Face who, from the 25th February for 1 month, have been hosting both an FKT Challenge and 100km Challenge. The FKT, or fastest known time is a term popular in trail running to measure records of specific routes rather than distances, and in a bid to bring the trail to city The North Face have chosen London’s picturesque (and steep) Primrose Hill as their UK route, with other challenging climbs in major cities around the globe. This, with their 100km challenge are a simple way to get people that are already passionate about running interacting with the brand. Especially if there’s a chance to win some of the coolest gear going.
Shifting to Virtual Races
Virtual races, love them or hate them, have been runners’ only chance at competing. But most lack the communal feeling that a race day gives you. Minus the virtual editions of the majors and a few fringe event such as TSP DIY, they tend to be a little bit empty and not dissimilar to a Sunday morning long run. And like a Sunday morning long run, we’ve just had to get through them while companies figure out how to make them more special. Step forward isorunclub whose mission is just that. To find new ways to race.
They have partnered with The North Face to create the VERT+ Knockout- a brutal, ten-week elevation leaderboard where every week, the lowest ten runners are eliminated, and a weekly winner is awarded a pair of Flight VECTIV shoes. The final ten will battle for the crown in April. It’s these new formats that are not only what virtual races need, but in partnering with such a new alternative race company, The North Face can show that they care about their audience and are consciously exploring the future of the sport.
Content Cravings
Finally, lockdown, with most of us spending more time at home has meant an huge increase in our content consumption. With Netflix’s catalogue exhausted a lot of us are hopelessly looking for new things to watch. YouTube alone saw ‘workout from home’ videos triple in views and ‘sourdough’ videos jump 400% during the height of the pandemic.
So it made sense for The North Face to incorporate some longer form content into their VECTIV launch, which they did with a series of record attempt documentaries. First, Summer of Wonder, in which American runner Kaytlyn Gerbin attempted to break the longstanding female FKT along the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park. That’s 94 miles and 24,000 feet of climbing that the average thru-hiker takes around two weeks to conquer. Their next record attempt saw Spanish ultra-runner Pau Capell attempt to break his 2019 UTMB winning time in Breaking 20. Again for clarity, that’s a 106 mile trail along some of the toughest terrain on the planet. Mont Blanc isn’t exactly known for its gentle downhill segments.
With much of the world still in some form of lockdown, even if nearing the end, it’s interesting to see brands capitalise on trends that COVID has caused. Whether these formats will be here to stay come the resumption of ‘normality’, time will tell but The North Face in their ‘future of trail’ VECTIV launch, have shown that it doesn’t need to be an uphill struggle. In adversity, some of the coolest opportunities can prevail.
