Swix: Building brand awareness across the changing seasons

For almost 80 years, Swix has been one of the world’s iconic brands for technical performance sports equipment and apparel. The leading ski wax maker, Swix has expanded into apparel, gear, and much more in order to help active people get the most out of their passions – by showing up, perfectly prepared, every time.

As a brand that enables great performance, Swix sought to be present throughout the athlete experience: from the joy & contentment, to the frustration, all the way to suffering.. Every athlete is the hero of their story, and Swix is their enabler.

Swix ran three challenges across summer and winter in 2022; two nordic ski focussed activations in winter, and a larger scale running challenge in the summer. The combined participants of both challenges was over 243,000 people.

Why Strava

As a brand with a clear focus on performance-orientated audiences, Strava’s existing audience, combined with the authenticity of Sponsored Challenges was seen as a great fit. Rather than a conventional display ad or a PPC campaign, Sponsored Challenges engage active people at scale by challenging them to complete an exercise-related goal, so the opportunity for Swix to be at the center of Strava users’ active life was an appealing prospect to the team.

The targeting capabilities of challenges were also extremely useful, with the team able to zero in on just Nordic and Roller Ski activities in winter months, and a larger scale group in the summer. This helps Swix stay relevant to their target audience throughout the year.

Impact

Whilst running the challenge and immediately afterwards, Swix saw a clear uptick in website traffic and email subscribers. Although the activation was primarily focussed on longer term brand awareness, the team also saw significant revenue growth as a direct result of the activity.

Learnings and next steps

As with many marketing teams, a big focus for Swix is on obtaining, analyzing and utilizing better data. With challenge participants from all over the world, the team is also putting in place plans to provide a better on-site (post-challenge) experience for users from other regions. 

The team is keen on further activations with Strava, particularly focussing on different seasons and sport types to drive brand awareness throughout the year.