Saucony Run Shoreditch experiential marketing case study

How Canoe helped Saucony bring race day in Shoreditch to life through customisation, community engagement points and genuinely useful post-race rewards.

Experiential / Production / Performance / Culture

Race sponsorship can easily disappear into a sea of logos, feather flags and useless giveaways. At Run Shoreditch, the aim was to make Saucony authentically present and feel genuinely part of the day.

This experiential marketing case study shows how Canoe gave runners and spectators an active role in the experience. The activity was designed around what people needed at different points in the runner journey.

The brief

Saucony asked Canoe to create an Event Village and Cheer Zone with genuine Shoreditch energy, giving runners, spectators and run clubs more reasons to get involved before, during and after the race.

People were already there to run, support their friends and enjoy the day, so the experiential marketing campaign needed to add to that experience without turning it into a corporate expo. Success meant creating atmosphere, encouraging dwell time and generating social content while earning credibility with the local running community.

The race-day engagement strategy

We built the brand experience around three natural moments in the runner journey. Before the race, runners could personalise what they wore. Out on the course, spectators could support them through music, cheer signs and by helping them make a racket with bam-bam sticks and whistles. At the finish, runners could celebrate their result and pick up something useful.

Custom Works

We created a Saucony Custom Works station which gave runners a focused menu of heat-transfer designs before the start. After the race, they could add their official finish time to their finisher tee using a pixelated transfer created around the event identity. Limited-edition bandanas gave them another way to personalise their race-day kit.

Adding a finish time turned a standard race T-shirt into a personal record of the day. Runners photographed their finished pieces and each other at the mirrors, so social sharing grew naturally from the experience.

Free customisation created the strongest consumer pull. It brought practical value, personal expression and a sense of achievement into one straightforward interaction.

A useful post-race reward

A branded Saucony van served 900 vegan electrolyte ice lollies in three flavours. Runners showed their medal to receive one, making the offer easy to understand and quick to deliver at the finish.

The ice lollies responded to an immediate post-race need and gave people something useful at exactly the right point in the day.

Giving the Cheer Zone a local voice

Canoe worked with Rinse FM to give the Cheer Zone an East London sound, with Oneman and G33 providing the race-day soundtrack from the Saucony stage.

Spectators made signs and used Saucony T-shirts, whistles and bam bam sticks to support the runners. These interactive elements gave the crowd an active role and helped build the atmosphere around the course.

The whistles won the day and generated noticeably more energy than the bam bam sticks

Production behind the experience

The Event Village and Cheer Zone needed to operate across two sites as one live production. Canoe managed suppliers, staffing, site planning, AV and power, security, wet-weather contingency, stock, talent welfare, installation and de-rig.

The custom team managed the queue efficiently, with guests selecting their design before reaching the front. Three heat presses supported the post-race service. The station opened before the race, reset while runners were on the course and was ready again for the first finishers.

Clear handovers, controlled guest flow and a focused creative menu kept personalisation moving despite the volume and safety demands of a live public event.

What created engagement

The strongest response came from the parts of the experience that offered people personal or practical value.

Customisation made the event specific to each runner. The ice lollies supported recovery and Rinse FM gave spectators and runners an buzzing last few hundred metres. Together, these elements made Saucony part of the experience and visible at moments that already mattered to the audience.

It reinforced an important principle for experiential marketing strategies: the quality of an interaction matters more than just the volume of people passing through it.

Canoe’s role

Canoe led the experiential strategy, creative development, event production, consumer journey, customisation programme, Rinse FM partnership, talent coordination, supplier management, staffing, crowd flow, safety and live delivery.

The result

Saucony Run Shoreditch showed how experiential marketing can create authentic engagement when it is built around the existing rhythm of an event. The audience had clear ways to participate, while careful production made the experience work across both sites and throughout the day.