Creative Plan
Find Your Fit[ness] Campaign

            In our Find Your Fit[ness] campaign, we want to not only increase our marketing of our fitness apparel and accessories to women, but also encourage them to get out and get active. In a recent study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control in 2013, only 20.4% of women participated in enough aerobic and strength muscle training to meet guidelines. This percent is lower than the 20.9% that was found in 2011. Another study conducted in 2014 found that almost 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies (Palmer). We want to provide women from ages 20-35 with help and encouragement to exercise and to love their bodies. We also want to supply women with more fashionable work out clothing; this way, women with busy lives can go workout, run errands and go shopping all while wearing our women’s fitness gear and feeling good about themselves. Find your Fit refers to our women customers finding their fit in our large selection of athletic footwear, while find your fitness refers to the encouragement of women increasing their daily activity.

Print Ads

For our print ads, we decided to target women, ages 20 to 35, who have hectic schedules that make it hard to fit in a workout. As previously mentioned, we feel that this demographic is important to target. Most of these women want to work out but have trouble finding the time in their schedules. We decided to break up this large age range into three groups. The first group, aged 20-25, are in college or grad school. We planned an ad targeted specifically at them. In the ad, a girl is going for a run, but her busy schedule is shown to the side. The words in the ad say, ‘College is rough. Your workout shouldn’t be.’ We are encouraging college aged women specifically to get out and be active; if they start a habit, they might be able to continue the habit of being healthy and working out into their adulthood.

Our second group, aged 25-32, is composed of career oriented women. They spend long hours at the office, and work tirelessly to advance in their careers. We created an ad targeting this group of women specifically. In the ad, a woman, is about to take off running on a track. She is still wearing her business suit and heels; her briefcase sits nearby. This ad focuses on the idea that even busy career oriented women can find time to advance in their careers as well as lead a healthy life. WORDS IN AD

Our third group, aged 28-35, is made up of young mothers. They have to take care of children, run the house, etc. They make want to work out but find it hard to make time amongst the hundreds of other things thy have to accomplish. The ad we created for this group includes a group of moms doing yoga next to their strollers. We used the words, “Breathe in, work out” to reference the popular yoga phrase, ‘breathe in, breathe out.’ It also references our encouragement of women’s wellness.

Billboards

                We also plan to create billboards with the print ads featured in major cities across the United States. We will heavily use the ad targeted at the career girl in the major cities because that is the most likely place to find women of this demographic. We will position the college girl billboard near any college campuses where that targeted demographic will be found. We also have ads in bus shelters and subway platforms in these major cities. The ads will be promoting not only our brand and campaign, but also our sponsored half marathon that will be taking place in that specific city. The ad will display information about the half marathon, including the time and date plus a website where the user can go get more information and sign up.

Commercial

                In our Find Your Fit[ness] commercial, we will feature four second clips of each of our three targeted women in their busy life. As these clips are shown, a voiceover will say, “Wherever you are in life, we know you’re busy.” Each woman will then smile and transition from their task to begin their workout, featuring workout gear from Finish Line specific brands. The voiceover will then say, “At Finish Line, we want you to find your fit. Come in today to get stylish gear and get active.” The final shot will be a graphic of our logo, website and the campaign name. These 30 second commercials will not be run on television. We do not feel that our busy target market has much time to sit down and watch television. We realize that they are often on the go, watching TV shows online, after the original episode has already aired. We want to feature this commercial on YouTube, Hulu and other online streaming sites.

            In addition to an online commercial, we wanted to create an ad to run during the SuperBowl to promote our Half Marathon. In the commercial, it will begin with a girl on her daily run, in Finish Line Gear. One girl runs up alongside her, and soon many girls join in the run. The running group staying running on the screen as the setting around them changes into a marathon setting. People are cheering from both sides as the group of marathon runners cross the finish line. At the end,

Other Marketing Tools
Social Media

                We will use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to promote both our company and our campaign. On Facebook, we will post any sales as they occur as well as videos or a work out how to’s for our followers. This way, users can utilize our work out guides from any device, whether they are in the gym, at home or outside. We also plan to use Instagram as the basis of a contest that will be discussed later. In addition, out Instagram will feature work out outfits created of our women’s department products. We will encourage each Finish Line store to have a member of its management run an Instagram account for that store. Managers can post new merchandise, workout tips, as well as updates for customers about sales and specials. See Appendix for an example of this Instagram content.

            We also want to improve our Finish Line website. Currently, it is heavily geared to our male consumers, especially on the homepage. We want to give equal content on the home page to both our women and men customers. In our example, we have given each gender an equal amount of space on our home page ad rotator. We also included an ad at the top of the homepage to promote our half marathon that will be discussed later, where users can click to preregister for the event.

 Coupons

Another marketing tool we plan on using is coupons. One coupon will be a generic coupon for 25% off a purchase of women’s fitness apparel or accessories at our Finish Line stores.  This coupon will be distributed via email to new female members of Winner’s Circle reward program. Members can sign up in store, online or by downloading our Winner’s Circle App and creating an account. In addition, this coupon will be featured as a cut out coupon on the bottom of each of our three ads.  Another way we will use coupons will be as special coupons. These will be distributed to our female Winner’s Circle members as they build up points. This coupon will allow a purchaser to receive $10 off a pair of fitness leggings when they purchase a pair of tennis shoes, valued at $50 or more. We will periodically send users coupons for a certain percent off their total purchase or for special BOGO offers as they reach certain reward point levels, via email or through our app, depending on the user’s choice.

Contest

            In our Find your Fit[ness] campaign, we want to create a social media contest where users can submit a photo of themselves showing us how they work out. They can hashtag the phrase #FinishLineFit with their uploaded picture on both Twitter and Instagram for a thirty day period, starting on 1/15/2015 and ending on 2/15/2015. The winner will receive a $500 shopping spree in our Finish Line women’s department. We will also interview 10 random entrants and feature their fitness story on our women’s section of our website. We will use this to promote our women’s department as well as continue to increase awareness of women’s health.

Winner’s Circle Updates

On our Winner’s Circle app, we will have an area for female customers who can use the app when working out. Members can log workouts, such as duration and activity performed. The app will keep track of calories burned and previous workouts completed. After a certain criteria has been met, such as 5 miles walked or working out every day for a week, members will receive one of our special coupons as a reward for their achievement. This reward system will go along with our in store reward point program.

The app will feature workout videos, ideas and tutorials for quick and easy workouts. There will be tips for those users who want to train for our half marathon as well as motivational videos about marathon training from fitness experts. The app will also send a notification daily to remind the user to work out. By using our Winner’s Circle app, women users can increase their fitness as well as earn rewards to shop and save at our store. We hope that these incentives will help to motivate users to remember to take care of their health.

Finish Line’s Race for Women’s Wellness Half Marathon

                Finish Line wants to encourage women to make time for their wellness and health. To promote our Find Your Fit[ness] campaign, we want to sponsor a nationwide half marathon in 10 major cities across the United States. In the following map, we have highlighted the 10 major cities that we will be sponsoring half marathons in. Starting March 7, we will host an opening half marathon starting in Orlando. We will then continue onto Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles. After that, we will head East across the continent, ending in Boston by May 9.        

Implementation

                At Finish Line, we believe in our women customers and their ability to be fit. We want to do our best to encourage them to take some time for themselves and remember their own wellness. We recommend when completing this campaign, not to make it seem too feminine or girly. We do not want our women customers or future female customers to think we do not see them as comparable to men. We know they have strength and willpower to be fit and active, but we also know that they sometimes forget this is their busy lives. We hope to encourage women with New Year’s resolutions to kick start their fitness routines that will last all year long. We strongly encourage the use of social media and our Winner’s Circle app, since technology is such a big way people interact with one another nowadays. Our busy target woman uses social media and apps to stay on track with their daily routines.