Taking an icon to the next level
The Clifton, the HOKA brand's most inclusive and popular shoe, has cemented itself as a top 5 shoe in the running space with the perfect weight vs. cushioning ratio, creating its distinctly smooth ride. The line’s latest iteration, the Clifton 9, perfects this balance with updated construction and technology, making it lighter yet more cushioned than ever before. It's the ultimate everyday running shoe for performance, everyday, and new runners alike.
To launch the 9th iteration of the iconic Clifton shoe, we doubled down on one of the core brand values for HOKA: enable all runners to fly higher and inspire new runners to join us at the starting line.
Not your average interview
Sometimes we just need a little company to get us started…or keep us going. Tapping into this insight, we created a content series to showcase just how easy and more enjoyable a run can be when you have the right gear and the right company to match.
At a Conversation’s Pace invites us on a run with charismatic and funny host, Gerald Flores, and running buddies Tom Black, Emily Abbate, and Kate Glavan, each with a unique conversation and corresponding episode. The series drives conversation’s that dive into each person’s backgrounds, passions, running journeys and how movement helps them feel good outside of running, to inspire and motivate new and seasoned runners.
However, At a Conversation’s Pace is more than just your average interview. Not only is Gerald interviewing each guest while both run on side-by-side treadmills, the run is gamified to get harder as the conversation continues, moving beyond the conversational pace for a little fun and suspense. As the speed and intensity of the treadmill increases, the questions also get a little deeper and more difficult, but these two running buddies have each other through it all.
10M Video Views & Counting
We created vertical short-form video content & horizontal long-form video content to share these interviews & stories across priority platforms. Coupled with the Clifton 9 launch hype and product imagery, we first introduced the series with a compilation trailer and dropped Episode 1, and then rolled out individual episodes and cutdowns on a weekly basis. Each guest had a long-form interview that lived as an Episode on YouTube, in addition to an episode cutdown & Rapid Fire cutdown that was shared on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook to drive to the full-length episode.
During the three week period in which this series was shared, we gained nearly 25k new followers across our channels, a 30% increase from the previous period, and garnered over 10M video plays across platforms. We also looked at engagement as a metric of success to see if our content was reaching and resonating with followers. Instagram and TikTok led in total engagements amongst platforms, with over 8k engagements on each. Across the series, we averaged a 2.28% engagement rate, significantly outperforming average engagement rates on key platforms and in our industry, proving that this gamified format helped improve the stickiness and engagement of the series.
While we can’t share actual sales data, the initial sales volume has far exceeded projected numbers. The performance of this social campaign is a driving force in the unprecedented global growth of the HOKA brand, helping the brand surpass 1 billion dollars in revenue.
10 Million Video Plays
+25K Followers, 7.5 Million Impressions, +20K Engagements
