K-Swiss Launches ‘Nautical’ Collection with Integrated Campaign through Inbox Digital

K-Swiss is putting online at the heart of the launch of its new ‘Nautical’ sneaker collection with a major integrated digital campaign through Inbox Digital - a member of Digital Marketing Group plc, the AIM listed digital direct marketing company. Initially the campaign will run in the UK, Holland and Germany before later being rolled out to other countries.

K-Swiss Nautical is a new territory-defining sneaker inspired by it’s sponsorship of the 1995 America’s Cup and today’s street culture. The new collection is about ‘style for the street, influenced by the ocean.’

The above-the-line work takes as its’ theme the urban city of K-Swiss Nautical, where a cool guy surfs across streets that behave like water, jumping across boats and avoiding a shark along the way.

At the core of Inbox Digital’s campaign is a microsite (www.kswiss.co.uk/nautical) hosting an online viral game, ‘Street Kiter’, supported by a series of three banner ads to generate online awareness for the campaign, engage the target audience and drive traffic through to the campaign microsite. All TV and press will drive through to the campaign microsite.

On the microsite visitors can find out about the inspiration behind Nautical, read product details and view the full collection from a range of different angles; and a store locator provides details of the nearest stockists. A video clip of the TV ad is included and a viral clip of a professional stunt kite surfer invites the visitor to send the clip to a friend.

The stunning ‘Street Kiter’ game starts when the gates of K-Swiss Nautical city open and the player finds themselves kite surfing through its’ urban streets. Using the arrow keys to steer and direct and the space bar to gain height, the challenge is to surf the street from point A, to point B as fast as possible whilst avoiding obstacles such as speed boats and sharks that slow them down and picking up K-Swiss logo badges to boost speed. Players can improve their time by performing stunts along the way. After attaining a certain level, players are eligible to enter a competition to win an all expenses paid trip for two to Fuerteventura where they can learn to kite surf for real, plus one of 75 pairs of exclusive K-Swiss Nautical sneakers.

Visitors can also sign up to receive all the latest news, offers and information from K-Swiss and midway through the campaign players that entered the competition will receive an email encouraging them to enter again by playing the game.

A button invites the visitor to recommend the site to a friend and includes a link to the specific page. Journalists can download images and information on the range via a pass word protected press area.

The banners kick off with the first ad aimed at pushing people to the campaign microsite to check out the range, a second will encourage people to go to the microsite to play the Kite Surfer game and a final ad will drive awareness for the campaign and introduce the new K-Swiss Nautical range.

Oli Christie, creative director at Inbox Digital says, “We’ve tapped into the big campaign idea of ‘style for the street influenced by the ocean’ and taken our lead from the offline work using elements such as the K-Swiss Nautical city gates, the cool urban guy, the shark and the kite surfing theme with the K-Swiss Nautical colour palette and logo. The result is a really awesome truly integrated digital campaign that will get everyone talking and wanting to know more about, K-Swiss Nautical.”

Edward Knol, K-Swiss European Brand Manager at K-Swiss comments ‘K-Swiss Nautical is a massive launch for us. Inbox Digital has delivered a fantastically creative execution that fits perfectly with the offline campaign and will play a key role in promoting the new collection online to our young, street-fashion conscious and free-thinking target audience.”