One afternoon this fall, Sport Chek’s marketing head Frederick Lecoq paused during a walk-through of the retailer’s flagship location in Toronto’s Maple Leaf Square to take note of the out-of-home signage across from the store.
“Call Touché,” Lecoq said to his communications manager. He wanted the brand’s media agency to purchase the ad space. It was visible from his vantage on the second floor of the store, and he knew the TSN cameras that film segments from the store’s new live studio would also capture them. It was an opportunity to double down on branding.
Lecoq’s request is reflective of the integrated, all-hands-on-deck approach Sport Chek took to marketing in 2015. Over the past year, the retailer has transformed itself into a content machine and connected the dots between ecommerce, sponsorships, social media, ad campaigns and the ever-important in-store experience.
The brand’s year-long umbrella campaign, “All Sweat Is Equal,” focused its energy on training, allowing it to target all stripes of athletes with a unifying message. The campaign took many forms throughout the year, including TV spots, how-to training videos starring pro athletes on social media and quirky, web-ready hits like the “Stamkos vs. Drones” – a video of Tampa Bay Lightning taking shots at drones that’s been viewed 1.9 million times.
The results are impressive: Sport Chek’s seen a $10-million sales increase year-over-year in the athletic category. In fact, sales are up across the board, including key areas such as hockey, basketball and sales to female shoppers. In the brand’s most recent quarter, sales were up 8.5% overall, marking 14 quarters of positive growth.
That momentum is largely the result of the company excelling in a few key areas: basketball, the Greater Toronto Area and the female demographic.
Of the latter, Lecoq admits there was a time when Sport Chek was “women stupid,” when it targeted women only as mothers, wives and household shoppers. Today, he said, Sport Chek is starting to speak to female shoppers as active women. While some of Sport Chek’s marketing, like its hit Mother’s Day video (viewed 1.3 million times), still celebrates the supporting role many mothers play in recreational spots, Lecoq said the brand is working on appealing to women as athletes, too – especially in key urban markets like Toronto.
The GTA was an important battleground for Sport Chek this year. In addition to the new flagship “fan store” in Maple Leaf Square, the retailer has added several new stores in the GTA and made the city itself the star of its #MyNorth campaign.
For that initiative, Sport Chek did a deep dive into Toronto’s underground basketball culture, first visiting high schools and local pick-up spots to meet the scene’s major players, then turning the camera on those characters, casting them as the stars of the campaign and a short documentary series it produced in partnership with TSN. When it came time for rollout, the retailer turned back to that community, covering basketball hotspots with detachable wild postings and magnets.
The impact was near immediate. #MyNorth pulled in 40 million media impressions, 38 million social media impressions and a blowout 701% increase in sales of Raptors apparel. Further proof the campaign solidified Sport Chek’s links to basketball: sales in the basketball category were up 17% overall.
And when the Raptors took to the court this fall, you can be sure the backboards were covered in ads for Sport Chek.
