Reebok Canada turned the cameras on real Canadian women for its latest campaign.
“Express Your Strong,” which promotes the brand’s 2016 spring/summer line of women’s footwear and apparel, aims to celebrate women who have improved their lives through fitness, and inspire others to do the same.
The campaign focuses on the concept of strength, with six online videos telling the stories of individuals who found the strength to heal or overcome obstacles by pursuing their fitness goals, whether in yoga, dance or CrossFit.
The main spot, which is also running on TV, includes clips of all six women, while a voiceover says inspiring lines like “a scale cannot measure your strength, or your determination, or passion… The distance you have come cannot be measured in miles or kilometers.”
“Strength can be defined in so many different ways,” said Michelle Lea, vice-president at Reebok Canada. “When you think about fitness, you think about going to the gym, you think about having to be strong. We wanted to dig into that inner strength [and focus] on the mental aspect as well as the physical aspect.”
Express Your Strong fits under the umbrella of Reebok’s global “Be More Human” campaign, which touts its “tough fitness” message and shows that fitness has physical, mental and social benefits.
Lea said Reebok is targeting the “fit-gen consumer,” a post-graduate who works out three or four times a week. While its bullseye is 25, “we recognize that you can be 25 physically or 25 mentally. It’s all how you feel,” said Lea, noting the women in the new campaign go up to 40 years of age.
The campaign, which was created by Reebok’s long-time agency Exacto Communications, also includes PR outreach and media events in Toronto and Montreal. The videos can also be viewed on Reebok’s campaign microsite.
Benoit Allaire, president and founder of Exacto Communications, said Reebok wanted to connect with women in January—a big month for getting in shape.
“There’s a lot of people going back to fitness and there’s [articles] that tell you how to keep your New Year’s resolutions,” he said. “We didn’t want to go that route. We’ve been talking for years about just turning the camera on and getting true people talking about their challenges and how they use fitness to overcome whatever life throws at them.”
