For its 35th anniversary, the once well known, KangaROOS “The Original Shoes with a Pocket” decided to challenge its competitors in the running category that is overloaded with tech and burdened with the annoyance about Big Brother-like over-sharing.

The spirit of running has been taken over by NIKE’s big brand technology, counting every step and constantly measuring your performance. So the mission for niche sneaker brand KangaROOS’ 35th anniversary was: Put the fun back into run! Like 35 years ago, when a little pocket in the shoe allowed people not to be bothered by bouncing keys.

To take on our powerful competition with only a relatively small budget, we decided to use the growing resistance against constant self-measurement. We started our public relations campaign on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo by launching the World’s First Analog Fitness Tracker: a simple sweatband with a pocket, which was positioned directly opposite the NIKE FuelBand.

With press releases, targeted information for bloggers and a viral video we got the attention we wanted and showed the world that we understand: You can’t measure the fun of running, you simply have it.

We challenged our community how to put back the fun into run. A fanboy’s idea was realized and we sent him to Australia to attach a FuelBand to a real kangaroo. People on Facebook could guess how many fuelpoints the tagged kangaroo would score. By joining the competition and posting NIKE’s own hashtags, participants hijacked NIKE’s social feeds and created a conversation around KangaROOS. On Indiegogo we launched the World’s First Analog Fitness Tracker: a sweatband, positioned opposite the NIKE FuelBand. But our crowdfunding project is a parody, including an ironic, viral video that generated a lot of attention.

Our crowdfunding project was a big success: As well as gaining 130,000 impressions within the Indiegogo network and 3.5 million further social media impressions in total, we also reached our funding goal of 10,000 Euro and sold all of the available KangaROOS sneakers. In addition we gained 1.2 million contacts as free PR coverage. But most importantly: KangaROOS has touched a truth we all feel: Sometimes technology doesn’t make life more fun. So ... just ROO it!