Ahead of this St. Valentine’s Day, Puma helped single Melbournians find their love in the ‘sportive settings,’ gave couples an opportunity to spend an unconventional Valentine’s weekend and promoted urban running at the same time. On February 12, the lifestyle and sportswear brand launched Puma Love Run, inviting people of Melbourne to have a nice time together covering a distance between 4.5km or 6.5km in the inner-city park Birrarung Marr—all for love.

Photo: Campaign Brief

Nearly 1500 Melbournians, both singles and couples, participated in the first-ever Puma Love run, developed by Ogilvy Group Melbourne and supported by a range of other companies. To spread the word about the initiative revolving around the ‘meet someone fit’ message, Puma launched a campaign including bold viral elements, a micro-website and on-street promotion, all encouraging people of Melburn to get their hearts racing.

Puma gave out T-shirts of different colours (red and white ones) to participants who are already in love and those without a date to prevent unwanted misunderstanding. Those, who managed to find a match during the run or just wanted to spend another couple of hours with their sweethearts, could enjoy good music and relax under the stars at the Puma Love Run Music Concert, featuring disco pop Miami Horror band. The cost of registration for the «rigorous stretching of love muscles» cost $45.

“The Puma Love Run was created as a fun event for people who love staying fit and the challenge of exercise but are not necessarily elite runners; the perfect fit for Puma’s positioning of ‘joy.’ We thought it would be a great experience if Puma could bring these runners together in a social sense, and help connect people together in a fun, fitness-inspired way. But we needed to make it different from the other fun-runs and Valentines Weekend provided the perfect inspiration,” commented Michael Knox, Ogilvy Group Melbourne Executive Creative Director.