Road Running Championships San Diego 2025
Roles: Designer, Strategist
THE BACKGROUND
World Athletics is the international governing body that oversees track and field, cross country running, road running, race walking, and mountain running events globally. World Athletics is hosting its annual Road Running Championships in San Diego, California in September of 2025.
THE PROBLEM
Despite the significance of this championship, there are few people who are informed about it among the local and broader community.
We wanted to rebrand the current advertising campaign of the World Athletics 2025 Road Running Championships in San Diego, California in order to communicate a sense of urgency and reposition the focus of the campaign around friendships and trends. We reframed the focus on evoking feelings of FOMO (fear-of-missing-out), as well as showcasing the vibrant and hip San Diego lifestyle/culture in order to encourage the target audience to register.
THE IDEA
58%
of American runners are women.
1/2
half marathon runners in 2024 were under 35.
Gen-Z prefer to run with friends.
3 in 4
To grow awareness of the 2025 World Athletics Road Running Championships, increase registrations for the mass participation races (mile, 5k, and half marathon), and foster community excitement and engagement around the event.
THE ASK
Executions
At the Irvine Spectrum Mall, one of the largest and most popular malls in Orange County, we will create a pop-up shop for the event in partnership with Asics. They will be selling classic and trendy Asics shoes that women in our target audience want and wear, and with the purchase of each pair of shoes they will get 10% off their entry fee for the race. The collaboration will create buzz about the event through word-of-mouth and social media posts by individuals likely to create earned media for the event, and it will be something people talk about with their friends and remember later on after seeing it.
Guerilla Marketing
University Running Club Booth
By meeting students where they already are on college campuses and through running clubs, we will leverage awareness and increase race sign-ups by offering our branded gear and/or the chance to win a discounted or free entry to the race.
Strava
We will create a Strava community for the event by creating a Strava Club through a QR code for the championships that participants can join after registering. Users can set up the World Athletics x Strava app logo on their phones to boost excitement. Here, we can post race updates regarding and create Strava challenges and virtual runs leading up to the event to create an online excitement regarding for the event.