Research informed us that mothers-to-be make most stroller purchase decisions, undertaking thorough research through magazines, online and retail. With purchase decisions generally based upon how lightweight, easily foldable and fashionable looking the stroller is, competitors built their entire PR strategies around these product features. Our insight was a breakthrough moment. What is the one issue far more important to Moms (and Dads) to-be? Baby’s comfort and well-being of course!

With its larger diameter wheels of 16.5 cms Runfee could deliver less impact to baby when riding over bumps. Our survey discovered that 80% of mothers were getting stressed by bumps to baby when pushing the stroller. All this led us to the core idea of ‘Crash Test Baby’ – conducting car-like crash tests on strollers to demonstrate Runfee’s superior ‘step-passing performance.

Our media outreach, press conference and press release featured ‘Crash Test Baby’ with content, videos and real-life demonstrations clearly showing to media how larger diameter wheels could ride over bumps more easily than smaller ones. Supported by the credibility of our research institute partners, this positive message was picked up in all resulting media coverage.

Runfee’s superior ‘step passing performance’ was also featured in TV commercials and at retail point of sale, where Pigeon trained staff to talk about Runfee’s excellence in step passing performance in order to educate mothers at the moment of purchase.

Crash Test Baby…

Put Runfee into specialized locations in over 200 key retailers.

Generated media exposure worth 14 times (¥150M) more than the invested cost with coverage on six TV/Radio networks, 52 newspapers and magazines and 269 online reports. 60% of this coverage featured the key messages of “large diameter tires” and “step-passing performance”.

Increased market share in the high price stroller category rising from 0.2% to 12.6% from February 2014 to February 2015.

Achieved sales of 7,000 units within just two months of launch, representing 35% of first year projected sales.

Put Pigeon Runfee into the top three stroller brands in Japan. (And that's the kind of bump we like!).