Sport Chek

"Social Flyer"

Research showed that Sport Chek's target demographic of 18 to 34-year-olds are consuming media online and not reading the company's paper flyer.

The retailer has invested heavily in Facebook and built a highly engaged audience of more than 755,000 fans. With an engaged online community, Sport Chek was faced with the question, "How do we get our Facebook audience into stores to make a purchase?"

Working with North Strategic, Sport Chek partnered with Facebook to develop the global-first "Social Flyer," a measurable social campaign that digitized its paper flyer. Following the success of its initial two month test period in the Greater Toronto Area, Sport Chek expanded the campaign to target an audience across Ontario in the summer of 2013.

North Strategic used a combination of organic posts, page post ads, sponsored stories, albums and video posts featuring inspirational lifestyle and product content to boost reach. The retailer used custom photography to create inspirational, action-based product shots combined with motivational copy. Both the copy and images served to build the connection between products and the healthy, active lifestyles of Sport Chek's customers. Following the success of the initial launch phase, the paper flyer was removed from distribution while Social Flyer ran for two weeks on Facebook.

The campaign lifted sales awareness by 40% and purchase intent by 32%. The campaign generated 106 million impressions, exceeding the initial objective of 50 million impressions. The retailer also saw a 1.6x positive return on ad spend from the "Social Flyer" campaign. During the period where the paper flyer was removed from market, YOY sales saw a 14% increase and products that appeared in Social Flyer saw an increase in sales of 34%.