Beyond the Scroll

Grabbing attention is easy: All you have to do is make a lot of noise. Grabbing and holding attention in a way that engages rather than repels, however, is much trickier.

Challenge

Active consumers are by description more interested in doing than passively watching. They’re certainly not inclined to interrupt their run, bike ride, or pickleball game to engage with an ad; in fact, any ad that disrupts their activity might well dissuade rather than persuade them.

One way to effectively reach these active consumers is by creating experiential marketing events tailored to their interests, but this often requires more resources than many brands can muster: 59% of marketers cite a lack of team resources and 33% lack of budget as major issues, AnyRoad reports.

So, how can brands capture attention in a way that complements rather than disrupts the user experience?

Response

The key is to seamlessly integrate the brand presence into existing fitness routines or active lifestyles, allowing brands to be seen as companions rather than interruptions.

Sponsorships can offer many of the same benefits as experiential marketing with less investment. Conventional sponsorships—like adding a logo to an event name—are low-lift but often low-impact. More meaningful are collaborative sponsorships or brand partnerships where the brand becomes an integral part of the experience. For example, rather than simply putting its logo on water bottles, a fitness brand could collaborate with a running event to sponsor hydration stations at key mile markers, incorporating motivational messaging that aligns with the runners’ journey. These partnerships are high-impact and don’t compete for attention like disruptive ads; instead, they complement the consumers’ activities, becoming a seamless and positive part of their daily pursuits and the memories created around them.

Strava’s Approach

Help brands turn individual challenges into personalized sponsored events

Having consumers complete challenges to earn rewards or the chance to win major prizes is a tried-and-true gamification strategy. In fact, so many marketers have caught on to the effectiveness of this and other forms of gamification, Mordor Intelligence expects the global gamification market to more than triple in size between 2024 and 2029, to $48.72 billion. 

With its 30 in 30 Run campaign, New Balance played up the gamification element by acting as a sponsor for each participant and inspired them to reclaim the joy of running. Strava participants who ran, hiked, walked, or used their wheelchairs to traverse 30 kilometers within a 30-day period in 2024 were eligible to win New Balance products and the chance to enter the Valencia Marathon (with travel and accommodation included!). In addition, they earned personalized achievement medals beyond those for meeting the challenge: The Busy Bee medal, for instance, recognized consistency in activities. These medals transformed the overall challenge into a custom event for each participant. 

More than 418,000 active consumers logged their performance on Strava during the campaign, earning more than 65,000 medals and sharing over 10,000 of their medal achievements with others on the app—which in turn helped spread awareness of the challenge.

By engaging with and recognizing participants, New Balance gained more than 60,000 new customer leads and enjoyed a lift of 22 percentage points in brand affinity and 19 percentage points in likelihood to consider.

Retaining customers is just as important as acquiring them. And it can be just as challenging. While offering rewards via loyalty programs is one way to keep customers, true brand loyalty goes beyond the transactional, encompassing emotion, affinity, and habit, as well.

Challenge

An almost surefire way to instill brand loyalty in a consumer is to make interactions a habit. And to do that, a brand needs to become a consistent part of the consumer’s life. Yet, an emotional connection is also key. The brand wants to be a part of the consumer’s life that brings them satisfaction, contentment, or joy.

So, what do brands need to do to create long-term loyalty rather than rely on one-off interactions?

Response

To keep customers returning, it’s critical for brands to consider how they can foster community-driven spaces, shared goals, or ongoing programs. Helping active consumers create a habit—rewarding them for beginning a running program or a nutrition plan—is one way to engender loyalty. But it can take an average of 66 days to form a habit, according to a landmark study, and as the Quitters Day phenomenon shows, many people abandon their effort before it has time to become a habit. 

Embedding itself within existing habits can be more fruitful and less risky for a brand: The consumers are already committed to their habit, and therefore it’s satisfying a need or want. For a brand to benefit, however, it must authentically become part of the habit, and it too must satisfy a need or want.

Strava’s Approach

Enable brands to become part of active consumers’ routines

An online marketplace of sports nutrition, supplements, and training gear, The Feed benefits from the fact that routine is critical to the performance of endurance athletes who make up much of its audience.

To gain the loyalty of active consumers with less-intensive regimens, however, The Feed met them where they were rather than create a new contest. Athletes who signed up on The Feed’s Strava Challenge page and completed 250 minutes of exercise during a two-week period unlocked an annual Feed “sponsorship” that included a $60 credit for nutrition products. The goal was intended to be easily accessible by consumers for whom regular activity was already a habit while providing them with a relevant reward.

The credit was given in four installments of $15, which led participants to return repeatedly to The Feed’s site, making visits something of another habit. And after these consumers spent their $60 credit, the offer of a free personalized water bottle when they spent at least $65 on the site encouraged continued brand engagement.

Nearly 93,000 Strava users participated, and 90% of them—almost 84,000—completed the challenge. The Feed also gained 4,563 new members to its Strava club, allowing the company to continue being a part of those active consumers’ everyday lives.