Running, we just can’t quit you
Posted: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 3:00 AM by Allison Linn
Filed Under:
Sports
When most companies want to sell a product, they try to tell you how fun the product is, how much you need it (even if you never realized it!) or how much more you’ll like doing your favorite activities because you have this great, new item.
The running shoe company New Balance is trying a different approach.
The company’s latest campaign, which launched during the NCAA basketball tournament, begins with an image many can relate to – a man sleeping soundly, only to be forced out of bed for the sake of workout.
“You are in a relationship with running. A love/hate relationship,” the narrator intones.
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| New Balance |
You probably think you know what happens next: Our hero will trudge out onto the street, his resolve and joy growing stronger each time his New Balance shoes hit the pavement.
Well, the commercial seems to start off that way, but then it veers into strange territory. The hero’s morning run takes him, incongruously, from a sleepy neighborhood into a futuristic urban jungle, where everything is red-hued, including the water, and the buildings seem to defy gravity. Soon, he is being chased by other runners, who seem more like bad guys in an action flick than inspiring competitors. Eventually, he flings himself off a building into another futuristic, slightly cartoonish world.
Meanwhile, New Balance keeps hammering home the idea that the sport on which their business relies is, frankly, a bit torturous.
“It is a constant balance. A balance between joy and pain. Work and play. A balance between love and hate. Everything we do is geared towards tipping the balance. This is the new balance.”
The love/hate theme is a risk, but it’s one that’s likely to score points for empathy and realism. After all, most of us do look toward our workouts with a mixture of pleasure and dread, and one would think that counts double for the type of hardcore runners who are most likely to frequently buy high-end running shoes.
But the weirdly lit, futuristic theme is distracting and nonsensical. If the ad is about being honest about the pleasure and the pain of running, why inject fantasy into the mix? The commercial leaves the viewer with too many far-flung questions: Who are those other, slightly menacing-looking runners? Did global warming make the ocean red? Did the runner do permanent damage to his knees when he jumped off that building (and why did he jump off that building in the first place)?
New Balance is launching several commercials using the same theme of running as your partner in a dysfunctional love/hate relationship. But while the flagship ad distracts us with its futuristic weirdness, the other commercials get our attention with their quirky form of honesty in advertising.
Click here to watch the ad, or click here to see the campaign on the New Balance Web site.
