NEW DELHI: How do you create excitement around a classic shoe? Well you could take a page out of sportswear company Reebok India. Well, you work with your agency – in this case 22Feet Tribal – and create a competition, invite artists to give their modern day interpretation of it
The shoe in question here is Reebook’s iconic eighties shoe – Classic Leather which was getting a new rendition – Classic Leather Legacy. 22feet Tribal recommended that Reebok should announce a digital art slam contest through its official Instagram account and invite artists all over India to create their versions of the Classic Leather shoe. The campaign was activated with renowned artists and celebs like KatrinKaif pushing the hashtag “WriteYourLegacy.”
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It worked like a charm, reaching 100,000 instagrammers within 10 days.
The brief was to participants was clear: get inspired by the shoe, create an artwork and describe the story around it. Artists from across the country unleashed their creative prowess and the contest received an overwhelming response from over 500 Indian artists. The Digital Art Slam contest concluded with an announcement of the top 10 illustrations on Reebok Classic India Instagram page, which were selected as contest winners and won a pair of Classic Leather Legacy with the top three winners getting featured on the official page.
22feet Tribal Worldwide national creative director Debashish Ghosh was pleased with the results and the buzz it created amongst the community. Says he: “It’s a common truth that people value the overall experience a brand offers as much as the product itself. As Reebok Classic Leather Legacy has serious street creds, this initiative to tap into the culture was always meant to happen. The collaboration with popular artists and the larger creative community to tell a story about the iconic shoe using their artwork was exhilarating. They created some beautiful pieces and by the looks of it, pretty much wrote their own legacy."
The idea to encourage fan communities to participate in a brand’s creative appears novel prima facie and could work well for many other categories. The successful strides that Reebok made with it is a case study worth considering by other marketing and brand managers as well.
