Sports Experts is one of Canada’s largest sports retailer. Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2017, the brand launched a fully integrated campaign earlier in the year to recognize all types of athletes, from the unskilled weekenders to more experienced and dedicated athletes.

While the overall campaign objective was to generate top-of-mindness and affinity towards the brand, the activation was meant to engage in the physical world (as a participative challenge) but mostly in the digital world (as a piece of content that could be amplified). Aside from only communicating its promise, Sports Experts wanted to create something that would truly support its brand purpose.

Sports Experts’ brand purpose is not about celebrating extreme performance and victory, like many sports apparel brands, it’s about motivating and inspiring Quebecers to discover the joy and benefits of an active lifestyle. It targets casual and aspiring athletes, not elite Performers. Therefore, the initiative was all about encouraging people to sweat a little, in a moment and place where they wouldn’t normally be tempted to do it : Montreal’s steepest metro station, Lucien-L’Allier, which is four storeys -- and almost 200 steps -- deep.

“Thermal Discount” was the first thermal imaging station that measures body temperature and rewards commuters accordingly, with discounts that increase with body temperature. For example, a 13% temperature measure (relative to designated benchmarks) would translate into a 13% discount at Sports Experts while a 70% measure would mean bigger savings.

The activation was deployed on October 19th, 2017. Equipped with an infrared camera [a radiation-sensitive thermographic camera paired with a heat-analyzing algorithm, the interactive booth] was installed on the top floor of the station in order to intercept and reward commuters who had been motivated enough to take the stairs. During an 8-hour span, hundreds of commuters interacted with the thermal station and “won” discounts -- from 12% to 78% off on selected sport apparel and equipment. The discounts were printed on coupons right off the booth. Many of the participants (even those who had initially took the escalator) embraced the challenge and started running and/or doing push-ups and burpees to increase their body temperature. Even police officers and metro employees joined the movement. The whole initiative was captured on film and edited as a content piece for social media. The 1-minute video was released on November 13th, with a modest media push (<10K$).

Only 24 hours after its launch on Facebook, the “Thermal Discount” was already Sports Experts’ most successful, most engaging piece of social content of the year, generating more than 1-million impressions, 500,000 views and over ten thousand comments and shares. The engagement rate was 8 times higher than the platform’s average and more than 50% of the
reach was generated organically. Moreover, the idea was covered by a few major news outlets and blogs, thus amplifying the reach. The sentiment was so positive -- and the interest in trying out the device so high -- that many franchisees around the province asked Sports Experts to deploy the “Thermal Discount” in their region. But most importantly, the campaign made a few people work out that day.