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Today’s Ypulse Interview is with Tara McRae, Senior Director of Marketing for PUMA North America and one of the team members behind Employees Only, a campaign recently launched  to connect fans with brand ambassadors on the ground, i.e. real employees from local PUMA stores, ready and willing to share random personal tidbits along with their favorite Puma picks. As a strategy we know plays a key role in youth activism efforts, we were curious to learn more about the marketing side.

Ypulse: How were the employees featured in the campaign selected?

Tara McRae: PUMA auditioned thousands of employees to take part in the campaign. The 14 featured were chosen because they represent what the brand is all about — [PUMA] likes to mix it up and have fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously, but still has an immense amount of pride in itself and its rich heritage. Our employees are some of our best assets, they represent what the brand is all about – they are colorful and dynamic. The 14 people who were chosen for the campaign are a great representation of this, and it shows in their attitudes and the messages they chose for their images. Take Jorge from San Francisco and his love for cupcakes or Emmi from Chicago and her illusive tattoo, clearly these are people that like to have fun and don’t take themselves too seriously.

YP: Can you describe the in-store component of the campaign? What was the inspiration for developing that aspect?

TM: We wanted consumers to connect with the brand via the campaign so we developed a fun in-store experience. The in-store component features a backdrop with imagery from the ads and a whiteboard. Consumers are encouraged to come into the store and take their own photos with their own message. The photos can be uploaded directly to Facebook or other social networking sites, participants can also choose to upload their photos to the PUMA page. Each week the employees in the campaign pick their favorite consumer photos to win prizes.

YP: What are some of the goals set for this campaign?

TM: PUMA wanted to do a few things with this campaign – (1) engage our consumers and invite them to get to know our brand better and (2) drive traffic to our stores.

YP: Were there any challenges in developing the effort? Lessons learned?

TM: With any development of a new campaign comes challenges on how to stay true to the campaign’s main objective of promoting a brand message while driving traffic and staying inline with the brand’s personality. It’s a balance we strive for in all our efforts. In particular with this campaign, given that our reach is hyper-local, rather than widespread, means we need to devote more time, resources and take into consideration local nuances. With holidays right around the corner, we will certainly pull from the experiences from the fall effort once we are able to evaluate the program from start to finish.

YP: How does Puma hope the hyper-local angle will change consumers’ experience?

TM: We wanted our consumers to feel a connection to our brand. We felt that they were more likely to relate to someone who works in the shop in their neighborhood, eats at the same restaurants, and hangs out at the same places that they do rather than to a model in another city. We hope that by keeping things hyper-local our consumers will feel a stronger connection to PUMA.

YP: What comes next for the Employees Only campaign?

TM: PUMA plans on launching a holiday version of Employees Only featuring seven new employees from our local PUMA Stores that will launch in mid-November. Beyond that we’ll just have to wait and see but we aren’t ruling anything out.

For more coverage of youth marketing, go to the Ypulse Youth Marketing Channel sponsored by Youth Marketing Connection.

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Categorized under: Youth Marketing

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