Finally. It’s time to run again.
The last 90 days have challenged the channel like nothing before. The cancellation of races, store closures at the peak of spring season and social distancing that made it impossible to stay fully connected with our community has taken a major toll on our industry.
Now, we finally have a reason to celebrate and get back to what we do best: connect people to the benefits of running.
At Runhouse, we have spent the last month working with The Running Event team and thinking about what the reopening of the channel might look like and developing content for stores to use.
Runners have a special relationship with their local running store. This moment in time is important for you and your customers. We think the desire for community, supporting local, and embracing health is going to be stronger than before and running stores should be ready to take the lead.
That starts with reopening.
For this collaboration, we wanted something that gave stores a chance to celebrate while letting customers know that you are open and ready to serve them again.
Guided by the tag “Let There Be Run,” we put together a portal of free assets that any locally owned store can use in whatever ways work best for them. Included in the portal are images and graphics with a wide variety of applications and dimensions to allow you to build out a campaign across a variety of platforms, and adjustable to your needs. These assets should help you head into this moment with a deeper toolkit of content to accompany what you may already have planned.
The key to success in your reopening strategy is to make a plan and think about how you want to talk to your audience and what you want this moment to mean.
We suggest a combination of gratitude toward your customers for their support and patience, celebration around your reopening and clear communication around what changes customers can expect when they come in your door. From there, you can start to think about following up with interesting stories, ways to re-inspire and what products and services you want to talk about.
We recommend you start by creating a 30-day content plan. If you have never done a content plan before, simply start with an outline of stories you want to tell, when you want to tell them and where (social media, email, website etc.). From there, you can start to plan what kinds of images you want to use and how to capture the best quality possible with the resources at your disposal. Lastly, curation across platforms and multiples posts will help you build strong relaunch content that can strengthen your message over time. This last step is essentially what a campaign does and is an effective way to think strategically, stay focused and create better content.
Regardless of your approach, you should use this time to think about how you can utilize your platforms to tell better stories and inspire your audience. They are looking to you more than ever before.
Let there be run.
Ryan Callahan is the president of Runhouse, a creative agency that develops brands, builds campaigns and works with running brands to help tell better stories. If you need any customization of Let There Be Run assets, write to
[email protected]
