FGL Sports - Sports Experts
Your Everyday Coach

The Goal

Sports Experts, Quebec’s largest sports retailer, wanted to salute the small feats of everyday champions - those who might never attend the Olympics but deserve recognition for staying active. Although it has dominated the French Canadian market for the past 50 years, the sporting goods retailer is now facing fast-growing competition, with local, but also international players such as Decathlon, opening new brick and mortar locations in the vicinity of its long-established franchises. This campaign aimed at increasing sales by at least 5%, by focusing on everyday athletes, Sports Experts’ most profitable consumers.

The Target

These ordinary sports enthusiasts do not have access to the support system that high performance athletes enjoy. The agency’s focus groups showed that the everyday athletes wish they could sometimes get a tap in the back. Staying active, no matter the weather, no matter how busy life gets, requires perseverance and discipline. Without encouragements, it is tempting to give up on good health habits. That’s why Sports Experts decided to act like the everyday coach that supports all active Quebecers and remind them at the same time that Sports Experts sells everything they need for their active lifestyle, whatever sports they are into.

Insights and Strategy

The agency lived up to Sports Experts positioning: the everyday coach! A good coach motivates rewards and inspires his athletes. Throughout the campaign, Sports Experts acted like a good trainer and created an innovative media plan that rewarded and valorized every single physical effort, big or small. Sports Experts support everyday athlete, no matter what sports they are into and the team played the customization card: more than 200,000 possible combinations of creatives, placement and formats were evaluated to find the best fit for each of the campaign tactics.

Every media touch point reached consumers during moments of physical activity and was tailored to its environment. The campaign extended its reach to a broad range of sports and active lifestyles and reached consumers in a context where they are the most receptive to the message.

The Plan

Through the campaign, the brand congratulated those who chose to bike instead of taking a cab with clever ad placement on public bike system. It supported them with customized ads at the gyms or in parks, popular with runners. The team created a hockey ring, a basketball court and a soccer field in popular transit locations. The campaign rewarded those consumers who took the stairs instead of the escalator. It selected the highest subway station in Montreal and with a thermal recognition billboard recording their body heat; the hotter their body temperature, the bigger the discount! The brand transformed street billboards into rain-activated messages that only appeared when the rain touched the invisible ink in parks.

It closed the conversion loop by empowering each out-of-home location with its specific localised SEM campaigns. In total, 500 micro-SEM campaigns were put to market calling out the product in the result page and drove to the nearest store.

The Results

Year-over- year sales increased by 10 % during the very important fourth quarter, leading up to Christmas. More importantly, the partner brands that were specifically advertised in the campaign (New Balance, Reebok, Under Armour and more) saw on average of over 30% increase for the campaign duration. The campaign won the best of show and 3 Grand-Prix at Prix Média Infopresse in Montreal.