ABOUT

Challenge

Foot Locker – the world’s largest sports footwear retailer – was losing its distinction and relevance. It had largely been overtaken by athletic-footwear and garment brands as well as by other high street retailers. The morale of staff, and of those in the value chain, was in decline.

Our challenge was to re-engage sneaker fans with Foot Locker’s essence. In doing this we would also need to re-establish the brand’s global credentials.

We discovered there was no online space where “sneakerheads” could get information and chat about sneakers. We felt there was an opportunity to meet this need.

Solution

Our creation is called Sneakerpedia. It’s the world’s first visual wiki, and it’s the world’s largest sneaker archiving project. Sneakerpedia is first and foremost a community space (rather than a marketplace). It’s a place where fans can connect, share, discuss, follow and shape sneaker trends.
Our idea is based on Foot Locker’s own fanaticism for sneakers, which is only matched by the passion of its customers. To generate and harness this passion, we produced a truly multi-media execution: we used social media to promote the hugely oversubscribed launch event, and used TV and digital marketing to promote the online presence.

Results

This campaign changed the public’s perception of Footlocker. Almost overnight it became an innovative mould-breaking brand.

The Sneakerpedia Beta Club was oversubscribed in just 9 hours, triggered by 4.5million #sneakerpedia tweets.
The Sneakerpedia community reached 6.7m fans online during the beta phase alone, and generated over $1million in free market exposure for Foot Locker during the same period.

Sneakerpedia was responsible for a 41% increase in visits to Foot Locker stores. Even more impressive, 41% of Sneakerpedia visitors navigated to the Foot Locker website, and 27% of Sneakerpedia visitors made a purchase.

In addition, the brand has gained significant momentum through increased social content sharing.