China hosted the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Genting Snow Park, near Beijing, was chosen to be part of the official Olympic Venue.

The North Face, not being an official event sponsor, had to close one of their biggest and most iconic stores in Genting, for the whole winter season. The brand challenge was to come up with an idea, where The North Face could still be relevant during this period, reach potential customers and create a buzz around the brand values, in a period where all the attention was focused on the Winter Olympics, an event we couldn’t mention or leverage in our campaigns.

We took this challenge to really celebrate those who truly never stop exploring.

We believed if one store was closed the exploration was still open to anyone who dared.

The North Face moved the store to a new place and opened the Coldest Pop-Up Store, with the latest The North Face winter collection.

This Pop-Up Store was located in the remote and wild snowy area of Changbai Mountain, one of the coldest areas in China, where temperatures often drop to a freezing -30? and only the bravest explorers made it to the end.

In China, almost a quarter of the country's population had participated in ice-and-snow sports as of October 2021.This passion was increased by 2022 Winter Olympics, making this year especially important to brands connected to winter sports fans. The key message was to bring the brand’s spirit of never stop exploring, invite them to embrace the elements and highlight the superior quality of our products under the most extreme conditions. The North Face had one of their biggest stores closed but exploration was still open for the ones who dared. The PR was split into different assets, physical media and social. Physical media was focused on two locations. The iconic store that was closed in Genting and the Pop-Up store that we opened in the middle of Changbai Mountain. We used social media and H5 platforms to tease and guide people to our new location.

It started by announcing that one of our most iconic stores was closed. At the same time, we wrapped the closed store with a map and a QR-Code inviting the huge flux of people skiing and coming to the Olympics to scan it, leading to a main page.

This page designed by The North Face on wechat, the biggest social media platform in China, was used to launch 3 films, pointing our target audience to the right direction

One where the store workers closed the store, a second where they went to discover and explore the extreme mountains of Changbai and a third where we revealed we opened the coldest pop up store and where it was located.

The campaign was aired from 31 December 2021 to 20 January 2022, covering all main Chinese social media platforms and bringing people to join the exploration spirit.

From a closed store and a brand that couldn’t leverage on anything related to the 2022 Winter Olympics, we’ve put The North Face on the map with 13.2 Million Impressions across all platforms.

Backcountry skiers and explorers came from all across China and tried to find it, turning a challenge into a movement always celebrating the brand spirit of #NeverStopExploring.

The campaign was also featured on some of the most renowned advertising and PR websites, pushing a campaign that was made for China into an international buzz around the Coldest Pop-Up Store.