In France, branded content is practically forbidden on TV. So the only way for sports brands to be anywhere outside advertising is to invest in athlete endorsement.

In contrast with those elitist codes, Kalenji – a French sports apparel brand specialised in affordable running products – chose to involve real daily runners and work with them collaboratively.

Our challenge was to help the brand to collect better insights to inform their new shoe development process. But we did much more than that: we turned boring focus groups into a great, entertaining online series.

Our approach was simple: we flipped everything we hate about focus groups. Rather than cramping up respondents around a depressing table, we flew them to the most beautiful development lab ever : the Australian landscape. And rather than asking them their theoretical opinion about our new products, we turned them into co-creators as well as heroes of our communication. A unique way to collect insights while creating entertaining brand content.

This unique co-development approach gave us license to use all kinds of media.

First, to recruit our testers, we launched a dedicated website targeted to passionate runners. The talent hunt spread using press, videos, banners, newsletters, email, and of course, social media.

After a selection phase, 6 daily runners were selected to spend 8 magical days “torture-testing” running shoes in the middle of the most beautiful Australian landscapes.

To allow the entire running community to take part in this incredible experience, we created a virtual base camp: kalenjiexperience.com

Statuses, videos and pictures were uploaded everyday on the social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook and the official website, kalenjiexperience.com), allowing web users all around the world to interact with our testers in real time. Of course, the whole experience was documented in a great video that we launched on Youtube.

For a first edition, results were above what we expected.

- 13 000 people volunteered to be selected as « respondents », and more than 800 000 people followed the experience on YouTube.

- We generated thousands of Facebook likes and Twitter posts. And thanks to an excellent relay on ultra-targeted running websites, we got more than 5000 new qualified contacts interested in pre-ordering the new Kalenji shoes when they become available.

- This communication completely matched with the spirit of the brand: close to the passionate people, technical, with a strong team spirit and an appetite for sharing the running experience.

- This new kind of "focus groups/web series" are becoming the norm: the brand asked us to launch 3 more Kalenji experience this year.