Nike has launched a localized OOH campaign encouraging Toronto’s women to get training this spring.

The four week billboard campaign is designed to drive awareness for Nike’s global #betterforit initiative, with six unique boards positioned strategically throughout the city to target a sporty female Torontonian demographic. The locations were chosen based on where the target female audience runs, trains and lives.

The boards, which each feature the #betterforit hashtag, target members of Nike’s female running groups, among others. Between 5 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. each morning, one billboard reads “It’s never too early to start,” and is meant to be seen by women out on their early morning jog. After 8:30 a.m. the sign changes to read “It’s never too late to start,” in order to communicate with a more general audience.

“[The #betterforit campaign] is our largest and most integrated women’s initiative to date,” says Claire Rankine, communications director, Nike Canada. “Our women’s business is outpacing men’s and tracking to $7 billion globally by fiscal year 2017.”

The boards aim to communicate with the target demographic in a humorous, authentic and slightly cheeky way, says Chris Hirsch, partner and creative director at creative agency LG2. The Toronto-based company partnered with Nike on the project, handling the creative side of the OOH executions.

“OOH was a natural choice when trying to bring the #betterforit campaign to life for the Toronto market,” says Hirsch.

As well as having a sense of humour, the billboard messages are city-specific too, with nods to circumstances unique to Torontonians. One message says “Train like an out of service streetcar…stop for no one,” while another reads “When your city’s raccoons are as big as dogs, you don’t jog. You run,” a reference to recent news in the city.

Toronto’s Jungle Media handled media buying for the campaign and the last of the six boards – a “moving” execution, depicting a female doing pull ups (video below) – was installed yesterday in Toronto’s downtown.

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