You may recall that in celebration of their 25-year partnership with Susan G. Komen, New Balance began encouraging supporters to dedicate their daily workouts to a breast cancer survivor on newbalance.com/laceup and by tagging social media messaging using #LaceUp365.
Our team relayed the experience of launching this year-long campaign back in November, sharing our strategy to employ a mix of public relations, event planning and social media to kick off the program in Boston with a series of four workout classes throughout the month. Local media and breast cancer survivors “laced up” at Barry’s Bootcamp, The Handlebar, The November Project and a yoga class at NB Fitness. The launch was a success, garnering coverage from fitness bloggers and over 425,000 social media impressions.
In what seems like the blink of an eye, we’re halfway through March and the #LaceUp365 program is still going strong. The @NBLaceUp Twitter account that was created in October now has 4,376 followers and counting, largely due to its strong and consistent presence on social media. Many of the bloggers who attended the November workouts continue to use the hashtag #LaceUp365 because they had a great experience and still feel a strong connection to the campaign. The Lace Up websiteis always churning out fresh content to ensure that visitors will return regularly to see what’s new.
New Balance has done an excellent job to keep the momentum going since the launch, and as we near the halfway point we plan to once again assist them in reminding media about the year-long campaign. We can’t disclose the details as many are still in the works, but we can say that we’ll continue to use both public relations and social media strategy as the campaign relies heavily on both. If curiosity is getting the best of you, you’ll just have to check back here in a few months to find out!
