As a longtime sponsor of the Montréal Marathon, Sports Experts, the largest sports retailer in
Québec, hoped to find new and engaging ways to activate its partnership, and consolidate its
position as a top-of-mind destination for running enthusiasts.

The objectives of the agency Rethink were to: raise sponsorship awareness; be remembered and associated with the event; engage the audience through interaction, not passive exposure; and stimulate visits to the Sports Experts website. The challenge was to develop an appealing idea that would allow Sports Experts -- a secondary partner of the event -- to emerge from an overcrowded sponsorship environment with a significantly smaller budget (< $50,000).

Most sponsors activate their Marathon partnership on-site, by offering goodies -- snacks,
beverages, tee-shirts, etc. -- to participants. They end up not really differentiating themselves.
Therefore, Rethink chose to explore a different and less crowded environment to activate its partnership. Sports Experts wanted to be part of the conversation during the days prior to the event, not just on-site. Moreover, it chose to broaden the audience, by not only targeting registered runners. The main insight behind the idea revolved around the notion that even though most people recognize the feat of running a 42.2 km marathon, most of them will never try it. So Sports Experts challenged its audience to a different kind of marathon, with a playful twist, on a device that doesn’t always rhyme with getting fit: the smartphone.

The “Scrolling Marathon,” a challenging, scrollable website with a length of 42.2 km (or 159
million pixels) that had to be entirely scrolled through in order to win equipment and racing clothes. Humorous, cheerful messages were disseminated along the way to encourage people to keep on scrolling. Once started, a chronometer was activated; the race had to be completed in a single session and all finishers were ranked. The playful, unusual nature of the idea was intended to generate discussion.

The “Scrolling Marathon” was launched one week before the event, relying heavily on its owned media (especially social platforms), and earned impressions from targeted influencers and media coverage. Rethink activated its Facebook community with sponsored publications, asking followers if they were up to the 2 hours+ challenge. They had until the end of the actual main event to complete the race and possibly win gear.

Tens of thousands of unique users entered the “Scrolling Marathon” in less than six days. Only 0.7% of the total audience completed the race, but the majority scrolled past the 5 km mark (around 10 minutes of non-stop thumb action). The initiative received national press on radio, live television and social media, as well as nods from international outlets and running publications, allowing Sports Experts to emerge as one of the most original and playful event sponsors. Visits to the Sports Experts website saw a double-digit increase and sales in the running category were above the previous year’s result in a declining retail context.