Airwalk Invisible Pop Up Store

The Airwalk Invisible Pop Up Store from GoldRun on Vimeo.

Based on the success of GoldRun’s collaboration with H&M, Young & Rubicam approached GoldRun to produce the first-ever virtual pop-up store to support Airwalk’s relaunch of the Jim, a shoe created in the early 90’s for kids who loved skating and surfing. For the promotion, GoldRun brought the shoe to places where those kids hang out – Washington Square Park, New York City and Venice Beach, Los Angeles.

Objective Using a very limited budget, connect with the brand’s DNA in an innovative way to relaunch a classic lifestyle shoe.

Solution Operating virtually enabled Airwalk to reach their core audience at the places they hang out. The story was seeded to a few carefully selected bloggers, resulting in an explosion of buzz surrounding the campaign. The virtual store – open for one day only – was able to sell all 600 pairs of the limited edition sneakers. The campaign inspired 26,000 tweets and netted $5,000,000 of earned media. Their e-commerce store had its busiest week ever.

“Aside from the sheer cool factor, the promotion proved to greatly strengthen the brand’s presence in the marketplace.  Since the event, Airwalk indicated that its e-commerce site is witnessing the most traffic in the company’s history. Moreover, this promotion had a huge impact on not just the target audience (18-to-26), but also people in their 30s who remember the shoe from its first launch.” - The Brand Channel

“GoldRun is all about brand engagement, a platform that allows agencies to think up new ways to connect people with products” - Kerry Keenan of Young & Rubicam

“The invisible stores were a way to reward loyal customers, but, as the company notes, they were also fun and, perhaps most importantly, exclusive — all of which align with the Airwalk brand and the limited edition shoes available through the promotion.” - ClickZ