Press conferences are effective, but usually so dull. That wouldn’t cut it online. We thought we’d flip the convention on its head. Kevin had the reporters, he had the audience, and even the shoes. He was only missing one thing — the facts.

We had little time and virtually no money to pull this off. But we did have one thing: Kevin Hart for three hours one afternoon in California. The idea had to be simple, funny and super effective across social.

A couple of weeks before the race we dropped the press conference film on Kev’s Facebook page, with supporting posts on his Instagram account. Immediately, his personal social channels blew up as the film captured the imagination of 2.2m followers.

Kev kept the momentum going by posting regular updates of his ordeal — we mean run — on Instagram. The new legion of Hood to Coast fans were given unique insight into the world’s longest relay race.

With no paid media from Nike, and competing with the opening day of the Olympics we made record breaking social noise around the Hood to Coast event — 180m impressions. The closest to that was in 2013 with 16m. Some more math shows that’s 17x more talk than any other year.

People watched it, liked it and shared it. There were even GIFs of the film popping up in normal conversation.

A regional race became part of pop culture and we opened up the world of running to an apathetic audience, inspiring record numbers in the process. Kevin Hart’s ‘Move with Hart’ campaign goes from strength to strength, helping spread the message that if you got a body, move it.