How I Pitched This - The U.S. Launch of KIPRUN (Decathalon’s High Performance Running Brand)
OutsidePR began working with Decathlon in the U.S. PR strategy in 2019, but it wasn’t until late 2024 that Decathlon’s performance run brand, KIPRUN, entered the conversation. Despite getting its name from the electrifying cheers of the 2007 New York City Marathon crowd – “Keep running!” – KIPRUN had never had a presence in the U.S. So when Decathlon told us that we’d be launching KIPRUN in the U.S. market in the spring of 2026, a few immediate challenges arose.
Chiefly amongst the challenges was how do we successfully launch a new running brand into the increasingly crowded U.S. market?
Well, OPR took the long approach. Seventeen months to be precise.
Our strategy started at The Running Event in Austin, TX, in late 2024. KIPRUN had a small booth presence at the show, and was using their attendance to gain a better understanding of opportunities in the U.S. market, what consumers were most interested in, and what set apart the most successful brands. OutsidePR set up 15 meetings between KIPRUN leadership and some of the most knowledgeable journalists and thought leaders in the industry. These meetings set the stage for months of product development and brand refinement.
Fast forward to April 2025. OutsidePR brought three media to “The Home of Champions” – Iten, Kenya – for a VIP visit to KIPRUN’s 42 House: an athlete-centered performance training center designed to remove any barriers to ultimate performance. Journalists were immersed in the culture by spending the night at the 42 House, and tested KIPRUN’s most advanced road running shoe to-date. The experience provided an in-depth opportunity to discover KIPRUN beyond their products, and even led to future content partnerships with Believe In The Run.
Following our 42 House press activation, KIPRUN slowed until the late summer when the brand introduced select models of their hydration vests to the U.S. market via Decathlon.com. OutsidePR used these hydration vests as an opportunity to put KIPRUN into the minds of endemic editors through product seeding and a tease towards what was to come. Expectedly, coverage was slow, but the media began to see the quality products that KIPRUN was producing.
The Running Event 2025 was when we really began to pick up steam.
OutsidePR used TRE 2025 as the official introduction of KIPRUN to the U.S. market. Our goal was to be one of the buzziest brands at the show, and we accomplished this through a multi-pronged approach:
We hosted a live podcast happy hour with Believe In The Run the evening before the show began with 45 attendees.
The following day we hosted two group runs for media, wholesalers, and consumers – including over 60 participants.
We seeded out dozens of shoes to key opinion leaders during the show. Our goal was to have the most influential media attendees walking around with boxes of KIPRUN shoes.
By the end of the week, KIPRUN was officially on the radar of the entire U.S. run industry. KIPRUN received 71 social media, podcast, and editorial mentions by mid December, and sample requests were flooding in, all before the prospective live launch date of April 6, 2026.
Our team made the bold recommendation to withhold any embargo information after TRE 2025 as we encouraged the media to share “first-look” and comparison reviews. The risk was that this approach might cannibalize KIPRUN launch week coverage. But again, our belief was that if we could build brand credibility and buzz through our endemic media, we will start to saturate the core run market with brand awareness and intrigue.
Over the next few months building up to the April 6 launch date, the heat surrounding the brand kept rising. The media were thoroughly impressed by the new shoes, technologies, foams, and competitive retail pricing, resulting in 20-25 monthly hits.
This long lead, strategic, and endemic-focused approach resulted in 118 hits and over 126 million impressions for KIPRUN on launch day!
Keep an eye out for KIPRUN in the coming months, and in the meantime, keep running.
