AVIA Athletic Shoes – Putting Ourselves in Women’s Shoes

The Challenge: Re-introduce a previously well-known athletic shoe brand and its new product line to retailers and consumers after many years of marketing inactivity.

The Approach: While AVIA makes both men’s and women’s styles, the women’s line accounted for the vast majority of sales. The primary strategy was to address women with “life truths” messaging that was both inspirational and aspirational.

The launch of this integrated campaign was initiated with the sponsorship of high profile women events (i.e., Race for a Cure) and aerobics competitions. Product literature highlighting AVIA’s history as well as its advanced technology and features coupled with on-site demonstrations helped the customers feel confident knowing that they were purchasing a very high quality product. A promotional campaign around the idea of “Take AVIA out for a test drive”was developed and activated shortly after the official launch.

The Change: This promotion proved so successful that 2-month sales at targeted retailers exceeded sales figure forecast for 6 months! This promotion also helped secure highly visible in-store product positioning and provided the foundation for the successful brand sold in athletic shoe retailers today.