Our goal was to position the New Balance New York Experience Store as the ultimate retail experience and drive interest and engagement amongst the community of runners. Our challenge was to engage with “New York Activists” in order to gain momentum with a very specific target that took moving and running seriously.

To support the goal, Urban Dash was born. This mobile gaming app was at its core, an experience that got people moving. We took gaming, traditionally a category that isolates people, and brought it to life in a way that motivated the target and created a community. Among ‘Dashers’ we reinforced New Balance as a brand focused on innovation and performance products. Using the baton, the iconic representation of competition running, the Urban Dash game got New Yorkers moving and drove people to the store. By making players the heroes and the store part of their story, we created excitement around the launch in an original way.

Up + Running was an integrated campaign created to drive excitement and movement during the New Balance NYC flagship store launch. It utilized paid outdoor media across New York City and an interactive gaming app we created, called Urban Dash. Urban Dash was at its core a running experience, that pushed players outside to capture virtual batons placed all over the city for one month during the store opening. To support the launch of the store and the app, media played a key role in engaging people to download and play Urban Dash and to drive awareness of the New Balance Flagship store. In addition, street teams hit city streets to interact with New Yorkers and show them the app and how it worked, as well as drive awareness and trial of the store experience.

Overall, we exceeded our objective to motivate New Yorkers to move and visit New Balance New York.-1,000+ people downloaded the iPhone application-Urban Dash video received 6MM blogger hits the 1st day -Each player averaged 22 miles; over 2 hours of game play-300 people lined up to enter the store on opening day-Exceeded store launch traffic with over 12K+ visitors per month since Grand Opening-Over 74 MM media impressions & over 55K face to face interactions with our street team