Schwinn Bikes is a brand with feet firmly rooted in the past. Adults fondly look back on the halcyon days of youth when they’d ride their Stingrays around the neighborhood with friends. Nothing to do but soak up all the day had to offer.
When Schwinn approached us, they were looking to launch their new children’s bike — the Krate EVO. It was specifically designed to accelerate how kids can learn to ride. Their goal? To make Schwinn a coveted brand for modern consumers rather than relying on nostalgia.
Our primary audience was the kids who would be peddling the Krate EVO around. We wanted to make this bike look irresistible for the children receiving them and (as an added bonus) lean on their parents and grandparents fond memories of cruising on their own Schwinn bike in order to drive purchases.
Our approach to this campaign was people first.
This is our guiding principle because, at the end of the day, it's why we’re all here — to understand our audiences in order to craft compelling creative to unite a brand and its people under one banner.
In this case, it was taking the time to understand Schwinn’s core audiences in order to spark a joy-filled Holiday unboxing.
“Children can serve as remarkable teachers. They can remind us of who we once were and who we can be again. They can be our greatest role models, if only we let them.”
No one understands the joy of riding a bike quite like a kid. And their unbridled joy and candor made them the perfect ambassador for this new, easy-to-ride bike. But beyond just being an ambassador, we thought, “well, if the bike is so easy to learn to ride, would it be easy enough for kids to teach other kids how to ride it?”
We used this inspiration from the product to land on our concept “Role Models” — a campaign sourced almost entirely from the mouths of kids in order to show other kids how easy (and fun) it is to ride a Krate EVO.
Rather than shying away from the past, we got to leverage the brand’s grip on nostalgia in order to drive the brand into the future.
We aimed to give parents the chance to relive the sweet, summer days they had on a Schwinn, while balancing things with a modern aesthetic and putting kids in the saddle of our creative executions.
And not only did we plan on casting kids, we let their words drive the concept. We planned to use real quotes from Krate EVO riders as our headlines, scripts and more.
Prepping for the launch, we were able to sit down and interview kids who had experienced riding the Krate EVO.
Their answers (“You just sit and push your legs around'' and “I never did it and then I did it and now I’m doing it,” to rattle off a few) turned into headlines for snappy, engaging (and extremely cute) digital banners and a launch video that would be served to our audience ahead of the Holiday season.
Now, a whole new generation of riders are getting to experience the freedom and joy that can only be made while cruising around on your Schwinn.
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