As a privately owned company with the freedom to chart its own course, New Balance has always prized independence and individuality. The brand had successfully attracted free-thinking individuals in the past, but today’s free thinkers need reminding New Balance is a brand that embodies the same mindset. With a new brand platform celebrating "fearless independence," we needed a way to identify and reach true individuals — those who aren't afraid to stand apart from the crowd — and demonstrate New Balance's independent DNA.

We created a custom AI algorithm that learned fashion trends then identified, surprised and celebrated the people who break them in real time. First our algorithm collected a robust dataset of what people were wearing, organizing it into trends. Then we put it to work spotting exceptions to these trends during New York Fashion Week. For our one-day live stunt, we secretly created an installation with digital displays powered by our custom AI in the heart of New York's fashion scene. Passersby didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, including the hidden camera scanning the crowd for exceptions. The storefront only came to life once an exception was identified. Those individuals who were identified as an exception were then surprised with their picture and unique data on the screen, street teams rewarding them with interviews, and a professional photo shoot and New Balance product to celebrate their individual style.

New Balance’s target has always been those who go against the grain. To identify these true individuals among the masses, we needed to go beyond the capabilities of standard media targeting, because these people couldn’t be identified by demographic or even psychographic data. We needed a way to find people who were actually living their individuality, rewarding their independent behavior in real time and associating the brand more closely with them. Our strategy was to seek them out during New York Fashion Week, a time when style is on parade but real individuality goes uncelebrated amid the people and brands shouting rules about what's on trend and what’s not. Against a backdrop of editors, influencers, celebrities and fashion followers subscribing to the same trends, we wanted to identify true individuality.

To identify and celebrate our target in real time, we created a multipurpose algorithm that learned and understood fashion, then sorted it objectively creating a database of trends. Our AI went beyond just identifying specific items of clothing like halter tops or skinny jeans — it analyzed massive amounts of fashion data at one time to recognize trends and exceptions.

We put our computer to work in one of the most extreme fashion situations — the streets of SoHo during New York Fashion Week. Our figure tracking was both fast and precise enough to identify items of clothing, colors, patterns and combinations on individuals scanned in a crowd. Inputs were analyzed against our database to identify an “exception” in real time; in 1.7 seconds, an individual was analyzed, identified, and celebrated on our digital OOH screen with their unique fashion data, creating a fully personalized and surprising experience.

The success of the one-day activation captured the attention of our target and also garnered recognition from fashion and cultural media outlets around the world. Fashion publications such as Highsnobiety and Fashion Network, technology outlets such as Fast Company and Mashable, and media networks like Bloomberg and CNBC all took notice of New Balance’s innovative use of technology to create a standout experience and brand statement celebrating individuality.

Our unique target was celebrated around the world with Fashion Week support activations in Canada, Sweden and Spain. The content successfully reached new audiences, both in person and digitally, breaking the brand's standard engagement benchmarks with nearly 140 million impressions globally, most of which were earned. This activation transcended traditional media by not only giving New Balance an authentic voice at Fashion Week, but also giving our unique target a new reason to connect with the brand, successfully increasing awareness and affinity.