FGL Sports ltée (Sports Experts)
Thermal Discount

The Goal

Sports Experts is Québec’s prominent and well-known sports retailer. For the past 50 years it has been the go-to destination for anything and everything sports-related in the province. Being virtually uncontested during all those years led the brand to focus communications on new products and promotions, thus putting less emphasis on building brand affinity and purpose. And in the face of increasing competition, Sports Experts needed to act. For its 50th anniversary campaign, Sports Experts wanted to launch a fully integrated campaign to not only strengthen top-of-mindedness, but to generate preference and brand affinity. It was not just about saying, it was about doing.

The Insight

In the few months preceding the campaign, Sports Experts revisited and clarified their positioning, and defined how its brand would impact not only its communications but also its store experience, content strategy and sponsorships. Province-wide research had revealed that Sports Experts’ core target – the young and active family – was compelled by relatable levels of performance and motivated by reasonable ambitions. It wasn’t about winning, it was about pushing themselves (a little) further. The customers valued the pat-on-the-back approach more than the no-pain-no-gain spirit. Sports Experts’ brand archetype was not the athlete or the coach, it was the friendly motivator. Nike and Under Armour were already playing the roles of the heroic achievers.

These insights helped shape the campaign platform. The brand would focus on its true purpose, which was to inspire and motivate Québecers to adopt an active lifestyle, and find enjoyment in the process. Sports Experts aspired to deploy a real-life activation that would encourage and reward people for demonstrating extra effort. The goal was to engage its target in the physical world, as a participative challenge, with strong focus in the digital world by employing a piece of content that could be amplified.

The Plan

The agency sought small, relatable, everyday life moments where this could be achieved. One observation that stood out was the fact that if given a chance, most people (95%+) would always choose the escalator over stairs. As a result, the brand’s initiative was to encourage people to sweat a little, in a setting where they wouldn’t normally be inclined to sweat, such as Montréal’s steepest metro station, Lucien-L’Allier, which is four stories or 200 steps high.

The concept was to establish the first thermal imaging station that measures body temperature and rewards commuters with discounts that comparably increase with body temperature. For example, a 13% temperature measure (relative to designated benchmarks) would translate to a 13% discount at Sports Experts, while a 70% measure would result in more substantial savings.

Technology and tools

The activation was deployed on October 19, 2017. Equipped with an infrared camera (a radiation-sensitive thermographic camera paired with a heat-analyzing algorithm), the interactive booth was installed on the top floor of the station in order to intercept and reward commuters who had been motivated to take the stairs. During an eight-hour time period, hundreds of commuters interacted with the thermal station and “won” discounts ranging from 12% to 78% on selected sports apparel and equipment. Discounts were printed on coupons at the booth. Many participants, even those who typically rode the escalator, embraced the challenge with gusto. They chose to run and/or do push-ups and burpees to increase their body temperature. Even police officers and metro employees joined the movement. The whole initiative was captured on film and edited as a content piece for social media. The one-minute video was released on Nov. 13, with a modest media push (<10K$), and with key content partnerships to help amplify the piece.

The Results

A mere 24 hours after the launch on Facebook, Thermal Discount was already Sports Experts’ most successful, engaging piece of social content of the year, generating more than 1M impressions, 500,000 views and more than ten thousand comments and shares. The engagement rate was eight times higher than the platform’s average and more than 50% of the reach was generated organically. Moreover, the idea was covered by a few major news outlets and blogs, thus amplifying the reach. The work received two gold Clio Sports awards, three One Show merits, two Créa, two Marketing, one Atomic and three Shopper Innovation awards.