To help find a spokeswoman for their women’s sportswear line, AYAMi, ASICS has launched a Facebook app and digital campaign to find a new face to front next year’s brand campaign. This expands on their strategy of recruiting runners at last May’s Paris Marathon. The campaign hopes to expand on the AYAMi Spring-Summer print and online campaign, which featured amateur atheletes exercising, to reinforce a modern image of femininity and beauty.
The dedicated Facebook fan page features a live ‘casting’ application which asks women to post their best running photos or films on the page’s wall, which are then voted on by other members of the community. A Facebook app accumulates all the votes submitted and displays the top 10 (a work still in progress according to the page). Runners with the most votes will be featured in a seasonal ‘Lookbook’, and the most popular will appear in ASICS’ 2011 AYAMi campaign.
As fans engage with the brand for the contest, they can also get product information, view behind the scenes videos, and get a list of upcoming marathon events. Brian Elliott, CEO of Amsterdam Worldwide, ASICS’ agency, said: “AYAMi is the perfect fusion of fashion and technology so it makes perfect sense to reach out to an online audience. We aim to inspire real runners to support each other, celebrate their passion and reinforce the brand’s athletic credentials among a core community of fans.”
Whether this campaign will resonate with ASICS fans remains to be seen. As of the first request for photos on December 2, there have only been a handful of submissions, many of which are multiples from the same people. There does appear to be an international audience, however, from the locations of the submissions. How ASICS promotes this to its audience remains to be seen. And having a “in development” Top 10 application may be a turn off for potential submitters. We’ll see how this develops.
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