New Balance 365 Campaign Fuses Content And Commerce

New Balance launched “New Balance 365” last week – an online marketing campaign in which they will run a unique short video clip daily, directed by experimental Swedish ad creator Jesper Koothoofd.  Each clip will run under 30 seconds at the dedicated site, and will promote the brand’s line of sneakers for the spring/summer line.

The brand views the campaign as a “fusion of content and commerce”.  A “Purchase” button is featured at the end of each clip, leading users to that day’s featured product’s details page on New Balance’s e-commerce site. The campaign is ultimately intended to engage users with compelling, entertaining content, while facilitating their purchase of the season’s sneakers.

New Balance will judge the campaign’s effectiveness by measuring unique visitors per month, video views, and time spent on NewBalance365.com.  They will look for consumers to talk about the campaign and spread it virally, by seeding video clips on YouTube, Facebook and DailyMotion.  To round out the campaign and add to its share-ability, the brand has incorporated an iPhone app in the form of an alarm clock with different daily sights and sounds from the videos. Directing all efforts to drive traffic to the dedicated site, posters and image stills from the clips will be featured in stores, and regular traffic at NewBalance.com will be redirected to the dedicated NewBalance365 website.

As a vote of confidence to how compelling and share-able the content developed for the campaign is, New Balance believes running advertising to support it will be unnecessary.  According to Taylor Duffy, integrated marketing manager for New Balance Lifestyle,

“If the opportunity to run paid media either online or in print presents itself, then we will certainly evaluate it,” Duffy said. “However, we don’t believe it’s essential to the success of this effort.”

The campaign was developed for New Balance by New York-based agency Mother, who also developed the 574 Clips campaign for the brand earlier this year.  That campaign used a short online video for each of the line’s 574 styles, and generated sufficient traffic and impressions to give the brand the confidence to repeat, and expand upon the effort. New Balance viewed those results as evidence that engaging consumers with compelling content (vs. running promotional pricing, for instance) would drive sales, and is looking for an expanded campaign via NewBalance365 to continue – and build upon – that level of engagement (and sales).