Foot Locker
An unconventional media approach to the 2024 Olympics
( Services )
- Brand & Media
The footwear industry is fierce, with countless commerce brands and marketplaces competing for awareness and loyalty.
While Foot Locker has a competitive edge in Europe, it’s constantly under pressure to maintain and increase brand metrics.
Being the sneaker market leader in France, Foot Locker understood that the 2024 Paris Olympics presented a can’t-miss-opportunity for them.
But there was a hangup
Foot Locker wasn’t an official partner of the Olympics. Available media slots were sold, and out-of-home (OOH) advertising regulations were stricter than usual during the games.
Still, DEPT® was asked to create an omni-channel media strategy that contained digital and physical activations. During our planning sessions, we found a key insight that would end up defining the media strategy:
The Olympic venues were quite far apart, meaning people would have to travel to get to them.
Consumption and insights-driven media approach
Our media strategy revolved around how people would travel from their hotels to the Olympic venues. Buses, metro stations, taxis, Ubers, and bikes (including bike drivers with Foot Locker employee outfits) were all part of the mix. We used a variety of custom wraps, digital OOH screens, and takeovers of various stations to paint Paris in the Foot Locker brand.
In addition to transportation-focused OOH placements, we also used media consumption insights to target the (social) media channels visitors would use to share their Olympic experiences. Rather than spreading ourselves thin, we focused on a handful of media channels: Meta and YouTube. This helped us achieve a high reach with a healthy frequency among our target audience.
+13 points increase in brand consideration
Combined, our campaigns generated close to half a billion impressions, by targeting the nearly 10 million people who visited Paris during the 2024 Olympics.
Beyond sheer volume, brand lift was particularly impressive. We ran multiple brand lift studies to understand the omnichannel impact of the campaign. According to Memo2 and YouTube:
– Brand consideration, one of the most difficult KPIs to move with a single campaign, increased by 13 points (index 113) compared to the baseline consideration
– Spontaneous brand awareness in Paris grew significantly (Index 172) among our 18-44 target audience
– The cost per uplifted user was “best-in-class,” according to YouTube
By finding our audience’s attention and leveraging the right digital media, we had a significant impact on Foot Locker’s brand metrics, especially in France. As our partnership continues to evolve, we routinely look for unique and innovate ways to push the Foot Locker brand.
