For The Love

of Function

Collage of social media posts on smartphones showing various images including women and men running, women walking outdoors, a woman working on a laptop, digital artwork of a sneaker, and promotional text for athletic shoes and events.

ASICS was looking to leverage existing storytelling content made for select retail stores by extending its life across social channels—making these stories cool, relevant, and engaging to a Gen-Z audience.

Client
ASICS

Studio
Honor Code Creative

Motion Graphics
Lily Xiao Haselton

Services
Creative Direction
Graphic Design

Year
2022

The Solve:

A multi-day, multi-form evergreen campaign across social media with content focused on the functional perfection baked into ASICS and how it allows each of us to unlock our heart’s and mind’s potential, seeing us through life’s unexpected terrain.

We focused on the stories of four different runners and how their shoes’ functionality helped them overcome obstacles and power through.

The core of the campaign featured original illustrations of each of these runners’ ASICS, alongside the runners’ photographs, featuring functional callouts that show each runner's views of the unique functional elements and what they mean in their lives, told in their own voice.

Shoe Portraits

For the core of the campaign, we created original illustrations, produced by Lily Xiao Haselton, of each of these runners’ ASICS shoes to go alongside the video footage from the runner’s interview. Each shoe was illustrated and animated to personify the shoe’s core functionality, as well as the runner’s unique views of the functional elements and what they mean in their lives.

A collage featuring a mobile phone displaying a blue screen with text, and multiple images of a man in a red ASICS jacket running, walking, and stretching outdoors, with illustrations of athletic shoes, and text about ASICS's mission and inspired stories.

Instagram Reels & Stories

We filmed Lily in her studio as she designed the custom shoe portraits for the interviewed runners. The audio and video from the runner interviews, existing footage provided by ASICS, have been combined with the video of Lily producing the shoe portrait.

We produced 4 reels—each reel is 30 seconds long with the final artwork being revealed at the end.

For stories—we divided the video clips into three, 15-second slides. Instead of revealing the finished work, we provided the campaign hashtag and direction for the ASICS marketing team to add a ‘Shop Now’ link for viewers leading to each shoe’s product description page.

Three smartphones displaying Instagram posts. The left phone features a man in athletic gear tying his shoelace outdoors. The center phone shows a woman writing at a table with plants nearby. The right phone displays a graphic of an orange athletic shoe on a blue background.

Feed Posts

Each runner has a row of 3 posts dedicated to their story and their ASICS. The first post tells each athlete’s story, the superpower their ASICS gave them, and how their shoes helped them overcome life challenges. The second post connects each athlete’s story and the artwork created to highlight the intrinsic power of functionality. The third post is the artwork reveal. Further connecting the beauty of the shoe, its engineering, and its function to help make you feel uplifted—taking on anything life throws at you.

GIPHY Sticker Pack

A custom GIPHY sticker pack was created for the campaign by Lily Xiao Haselton. People are encouraged to interact with the sticker pack by decorating pictures of them and their shoes, then submitting their pictures for entry in the giveaway.

The Giveaway

We invited users to snap a photo of their shoes or create a short video and use stickers to create their own functional callouts and tell their personal stories of uplifting moments, sharing on Insta stories with the campaign hashtag. Every entry will get a chance to win a new pair of shoes.