Commentary

Remember The Boombox? ASICS Taps Global Power Of '80s Icons -- And Blogopshere

You're never too old to participate in a scavenger hunt. Especially when the hunt takes place online, eliminating the physical legwork.

The blog hunt, created by Amsterdam Worldwide, is the latest phase of a pan-European campaign for ASICS SportStyle that first launched in February.

The print component of the "Left and Right" campaign consisted of four different ads that paired people and places, such as "Adam & Eve,""Up & Down," "Art & Science" and "East & West" -- with the tagline,  "What's a left without a right?"

This time around, ASICS targeted bloggers in England, Germany, Italy and France whose blogs had the most reach and impact on the brand's target audience: men and women in their late 20s or early 30s.

A challenge was presented to participating bloggers: they would receive two halves of two different 1980s iconic objects in the mail.

An Atari joystick, De Lorean car, Yamaha Keytar, boombox, 3-D view master, cassette, Rubik's cube, Casio digital watch, BMX bike, and a first-generation mobile phone were crafted and packaged in a cage-like graphite-colored mesh, which bloggers needed to crack open in order to retrieve their objects.

Each casing featured a plaque with a personal message, written in the blogger's own language, signed by ASICS.

Their mission was simple: find a left for the right, to complete each object.

Participating blogs were Highsnobiety, LimitedHype, FormFiftyFive, Freshngood, MZEE, Frizzifrizzi, StyleSpion, HypeQuest, BHmagazine and Fubiz.

Solving the mission seemed like a no-brainer; bloggers simply wrote about their half-completed objects and asked their readers to keep an eye out for other blogs that also received packages.

Once the ten blogs were discovered, an exchange would take place to pair each left with its right match.

"We really wanted to encourage interaction between different bloggers -- huge influencers who rarely stray beyond their own online orbit," said Andrew Watson, creative director at Amsterdam Worldwide.

"We knew that these '80s-inspired pieces would resonate well with them and their audiences. By breaking them in half and packing them in a shell that had to be broken in order to retrieve them, we knew that they would be compelling enough to ensure that they didn't just get left on a desk under a pile of papers," said Watson.

The halves were supposed to be exchanged last week, but something unexpected happened.

One of the bloggers is trying to persuade the others to send him their puzzle pieces in return for limited edition pairs of ASICS sneakers. This unexpected turn is much better than the originally planned trade-off. Bloggers willing to part with their puzzles receive ASICS sneakers. The brand campaign keeps on going and the bloggers are in control of the outcome, not ASICS.

This campaign got readers from multiple countries involved, enticing them to participate, inquire and become vocal in attaining answers to an online blog hunt.

3 comments about "Remember The Boombox? ASICS Taps Global Power Of '80s Icons -- And Blogopshere".
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  1. Mandy Vavrinak from Crossroads Communications, LLC, May 11, 2009 at 4:16 p.m.

    Love it when social media/networking takes over a campaign, and it's actually a very good thing... kudos for ASICS for crafting an idea that could spider out and have some digital legs with its intended audience.

  2. Scott Maxworthy from Max Media & Entertainment, May 11, 2009 at 4:52 p.m.

    What a great campaign - very interested in how ASICS management responded to that feeling when they realised they had no control of direction and that it was now in the hands of influencers.

  3. Jon Levy from Hype Circle, May 12, 2009 at 7:28 p.m.

    Nice to see such a well crafted PR campaign. Most of these bloggers have wardrobes full of limited edition sneakers, so it's not surprising that some preferred to keep the icons. This shows that ASICS understands the power of influential brand ambassadors. What's also nice to see is that they are willing to support their PR efforts in the space with some advertising - which goes along way to make bloggers feel that they are not taken advantage of. (Happily, some of those ad $$ have been placed with us).

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