-Situation

Somewhere along the way track and field lost its sizzle.

T&F became a secondary, niche sport. For plenty of reasons; the sport didn’t evolve the way other traditional sports have, TV coverage became paywalled, lack of brand storytelling outside of the Olympics, not appearing in social feeds, etc. All of which caused people to stop caring.

-Brief

Athletes who compete at Hayward Field always talk about the intangible “magic” that they feel while competing there.

They speculate that the “magic” comes from its rich history, the energy from the fans, and the opportunity to make their mark on the sport’s hallowed grounds.

Our brief was simple - bottle the emotion of Hayward Magic and share it with everyone on Instagram.

-Objectives

Create an editorial brand that forges a deeper and more meaningful relationship with the next generation of track and field athletes and fans.

Guts, we all have it.

It’s a little beast that lives inside us.

And if you feed it, it will grow.

The bigger it gets, the more you grow

faster, stronger, better.

If you give it every last sprint,

it will give you a speed that’ll last.

If you give it more lactic acid,

it will give you endurance you’ve never had.

If you give it the rain, heat, snow,

it will give you an extreme resilience.

If you give it another callus,

it will give you the strength to finish strong.

If you give it your mind,

it will give you control of your body.

If you give it pain,

it will give you glory.

If you give it your PR,

it will give you a new goal to chase.

If you give it your legacy,

it will give you a better legacy.

What else can you give?

If track and field is going to survive, it needs a fresh and disruptive voice that resonates with youth.

It starts with revealing track and field’s true, raw, hardcore, and helluva-lot-of-fun spirit.

We’ll tell athlete stories in new, attention-grabbing ways via a modern voice that resonates with youth.

And by elevating today’s stars, they’ll be able to claim their rightful spot in culture.

Hayward Magic launched on the 100th anniversary of Hayward Field, and uses a mixed-media approach to make the content stand out amongst the sea of sameness in the sport. The IG feed uses a punk-flyer aesthetic that is both visually engaging, but also strategically connects with the goal of representing the real, raw, and gutsy side of track and field athletes. All 80 posters to date connect to make one seamless flyer wall in the grid view.

@hayward launched three films to captivate the minds of track and field athletes, and to inspire them to train harder. Each film uses a different form of mixed media - claymation, stop motion, and oil painting on footage

Within the feed, Hayward Magic uses multiple, ongoing franchises to react and respond to athlete’s accomplishments and uplift their training process. From claymation “skullcasters”, to front page “headliners”, and even #makeittohayward carousels that elevate UGC.

Our goal with paid media was to expose new audiences to the sport of Track & Field and drive engagement with our content. We used a mix of traffic and reach campaigns to boost in-feed posts and stories among interest-based and look-a-like audiences. During key track and field moments, we've leveraged both static and video assets to amplify real-time reaction posts and pique interest in the sport.

Since the launch of our handle, we have driven 8.2M post engagements and were able to reach 26.3M unique users through paid media within the platform.

We sought to continue validating our messaging within the Track and Field community by broadening our footprint off Instagram into key endemic spaces like Citius Mag and Runnerspace. These partners helped to drive awareness and 123k content engagements around our key Olympic timeframe through podcasts, IG partnerships, and video distribution.