Los Angeles’ edition of the Nike + Human Race sold out Friday, making it the largest in the country, but the bigger story was college rivalry between The University of Southern California and Ohio State University to recruit runners for a chance to win $50,000 for their school, according USC student and Nike employee Thomas Wagner.
In a new and unique marketing ploy, Nike spread the word about its upcoming race with a series of events held on the campuses of USC and OSU where Nike’s “youth ambassadors” got the chance to try out their own marketing ideas to get college runners interested in the race.
They started out by first installing a mini store called the “Nike Hub” inside one of USC’s more well known fraternities, Phi Kappa Psi.
And this was by no means cheap.
“They paid us almost $80,000 to use our house for just six weeks,” said Phi Psi House Manager Frank Sanchez.
Once they arrived to USC, it took only three days for the Nike employees to deck out with house with Nike symbols, stained glass windows, a gigantic USC Trojans mural, projector screens, tables and chairs, lights, and a fully functioning store where students could purchase all kinds of different Nike USC apparel.
Then, the youth ambassadors had to start getting the word out about the race to their fellow students in creative ways to encourage them to race so that USC could win the competition.
The way the competition for $50,000 worked was simple: through different running events leading up to the race and in the race itself, college runners logged all of their miles ran, then after the race was complete they added up the total miles and whichever college had the most miles logged, won the money.
Their first event was a viewing party for the USC Football team’s game against Ohio State.
Students poured into the frat house to watch the game on two large projector screens both inside the house and in the outside courtyard located in the middle of the house.
“It gave students a chance to have fun and watch the game. It was a fully-catered event with more than 500 chicken wings and beer for students over 21. But more than that it let students know about the event and Nike’s presence on the campus,” said Wagner.
After this event, the ambassadors came up with the idea to have an ’80s themed Jogathon followed by a toga run the week after.
The Jogathon was a run-off where students came to the front lawn of Phi Psi and ran on treadmills for as long as they could. Nike representatives then logged all the miles run from the meters on the treadmills.
At the toga run, students took off from Phi Psi at midnight (similar to the actual race which took place at midnight) and ran down USC’s frat row, to campus, and back.
“The events were really fun. A lot of us would drink and party before the night runs though, so it didn’t really help our conditioning. But it did get people excited for the race I think,” said USC junior Raphaella Turner.
In addition, each week Nike’s ambassadors held training sessions to get students ready for either the 5k or 10k versions of the race, where students would run about two or three miles alongside the youth ambassadors. These miles also went toward the grand total.
After the training runs and events USC and OSU appeared to be about even in student runners registered. In fact, USC already had 500 runners registered two weeks before the race date.
And the competition remained close. Until the race.
USC and OSU seemed neck and neck for college runners registered, and when race day came and runners came to collect their race gear at the registration stands, USC appeared to have the edge.
As a city, Los Angeles had already surpassed its target and extended the registration goal to 7,000 runners where Ohio only had around 3,000.
The race began at midnight on October 24, 2009. Streets throughout downtown
L.A were closed down causing massive traffic jams around the city.
“There were so many people. It was crazy,” said Turner.
L.A.’s numbers where huge. More than 8,500 runners ran through the city making L.A. the largest Human Race across the country.
Ohio State, however, had more than 3,500 runners, but were nowhere near the numbers Los Angeles posted.
That didn’t matter though. Because regarding college runners, Ohio State trounced USC
OSU finished with a whopping 22,107 miles, where USC finished with just 8,907 miles. Even though USC lost, students felt that it was a fun experience.
“It was fun competing for our school. The $50,000 would have been nice but really it was just a cool way to get students involved and show our school spirit,” said Turner.
Wagner agreed, and said he would like to compete again in a more popular sport like basketball.
“I think our event was a huge hit for the company, and the students. We will definitely have to try out some other similar competitions in the future,” said Nike youth ambassador Zack Goldbaum.
Next year Nike plans to include more colleges to the competition for a larger grand prize.
