Sport Chek, which recently announced athletic sponsorship deals with organizations including the Canadian Olympic Team and Alpine Canada, is rolling out activations in a different way. The brand chose to fly families of two Canadian alpine skiers to Austria for the World Alpine Skiing Championship this weekend rather than use the money for a traditional media buy.

Frederick Lecoq, VP of marketing at FGL Sports, tells MiC the brand is focusing more on reaching its core target, of which 80% are under the age of 45, by building an emotional connection through executions that aren’t necessarily traditional.

“We weren’t looking to build awareness with this, since the Sport Chek name has pretty high unaided awareness,” he says. “We thought this would be a good way to build an emotional connection with the target audience. We are looking through the lens of consideration or preference over awareness. Consumers are completely changing their relationships towards brands, we have moved into the era of user-generated networks. Instead of having one single message that you share and distribute to your whole audience, you need to be able to spread different messages to different audiences.”

Lecoq says the Alpine Canada execution, which was videotaped with Notch Video and lives on the Sport Chek YouTube page is in line with the brand’s 2013 goal of creating more branded content, similar to what it did last fall with its big league hockey experience where it invited young players to play a game at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto or Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary.

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