Covid saw a boom in the number of people pounding the streets, as well as a rise in smartwatch demand. But for competitive runners, there were few events to train so the curve of beating PBs was flattening. And for the new ‘couch to 5K’ brigade, it was lonely out there. Our task was to accelerate preference for the Galaxy Watch 4, making it the choice for Samsung and Android owner-runners.

We identified an opportunity to unite a disconnected community of runners with a boost of motivation. For the first time ever, we transformed out-of-home (OOH) posters into ‘coaches’ that inspired runners to beat local community targets as they were out on their runs -all powered by a data partnership with Strava.

Working with Samsung’s creative agency Rapp, we designed an ambitious data-driven approach to creative and media execution, targeting our core competitive audience as they hit the streets. Using data feeds, each poster broadcast the best running time in their own particular community, giving them a target to aim for.

Our collaboration with Strava helped our planners define and refine the community-level data approach. Our OOH team used Strava data to hand-select digital panels along the most popular running routes and the most popular times of day. Starcom and Rapp collaborated on production to design a series of creative templates and set up the API.

More than 230,000 everyday athletes took part in the Strava challenge, logging an impressive 4.2 million runs helping us to meet our goal of accelerating sales of the Galaxy watch.