ASICS Left Right Blogger Outreach

ASICS wanted to increase pre-season orders of its 80s-inspired SportStyle range and reinforce its brand message of ‘What is right without left?’. The target consumer was in their twenties, dynamic, tech-savvy and interested in fashion and cultural movements. ASICS SportStyle was relatively unknown, but wanted to become a celebrated, retro-cool brand.
ASICS turned to the most influential bloggers with shared values in different markets, handpicking 10 of the coolest street-style bloggers from France, Germany, Italy, the UK and Canada. With their honest commentary, bloggers are hugely influential for the target audience, but usually only focus on their own geographies. To gain maximum impact, ASICS wanted to get the bloggers to co-operate across borders and languages.

 Taking ASICS SportStyle’s 80s theme as their inspiration, it created 10 iconic objects from the 1980s, including a De Lorean sports car, BMX, Ghetto Blaster and a Rubik’s Cube. The one-off models were then separated into left and right halves. The pieces were randomly paired and cast into unique breakable cages with a personalised message in the blogger’s own language. These personalised deliveries were sent round the globe.

To complete their one-off model, the 10 bloggers had to search online for their other halves; make contact with one another and enlist the help of their readers, followers, friends and peers. Each and every person touched by the process - whether via a Tweet, Facebook message, Digg or through the blog network - became a channel in the treasure hunt. The search spanned 38 countries, 29 different languages and hundreds of thousands of potential customers.

As a result, pre-season orders rose by 18%. In an intriguing twist, one blogger decided he wanted all of the pieces himself and persuaded all of the others to send their pieces in return for limited edition sneakers. He then reunited all of the left and right pieces to create 10 complete models and displayed them at Bread & Butter, Europe’s biggest fashion-fair, and generated additional PR.