Global sports brand arena celebrates water lovers’ shared connection with water in new branding campaign
2023 is a milestone year for global swimwear brand arena. Founded in 1973, the brand celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and is honoring this historic landmark with a new brand campaign inspired by its “Planet Water” manifesto.
Over the course of 50 years, arena’s connection with the swimming world through technical partnerships and financial support has covered the gamut, from grassroots level to national federations, the Olympics and world champions. Underlying this bond is a shared love of aquatic sports, and the desire to enhance the quality of life for all by promoting and enabling an active lifestyle, in and by the water. This is the essence that provides the foundation for Planet Water.
“Planet Water reflects an evolution from the brand’s previous ‘Water Instinct’ mantra and celebrates the essential element that unites us - both as human beings and lovers of aquatic sport,” says Kamila Pilwein, Global Marketing Director. “The new campaign highlights this shared connection and embraces life in and by water, adopting it as a lifestyle; we are united by water.
The Planet Water Brand Statement, created in partnership with Italian agency Macsiotti, speaks to all that have a special bond with this precious life source and how it connects us both physically and emotionally. Driven by a passion for aquatic sport, the arena community feels at home in water; it is their natural element in which they live with confidence. Pool, river, lake, or ocean, arena’s audience feels embraced and is unconditionally comfortable in their natural habitat: water.
In alignment with the global celebration of this shared natural element, arena launches the Planet Water campaign on World Water Day, March 22nd 2023, with the first flight running through the end of April.
Creative for the omni-channel Planet Water campaign was shot in September of 2022 in Barcelona, and features many of the brand’s Elite Team athletes and lifestyle brand ambassadors. In attendance, among others, were:
· David Popovici: 100m and 200m Freestyle World Champion and current 100m Freestyle World Record Holder
· Nicolo Martinenghi: 100m Breastroke World Champion
· Jessica Long: 29-Time Paralympic Medalist
· Leonie Beck: 6km Open Water World Champion
· Zsuzsanna Jakabos: Hungarian Olympian
· Sarah Sjöström: Olympic Champion (2016) 100m butterfly
· Natalie Hinds: Olympic medallist 4x100 freestyle relay & World champion 4x100m medley relay
Working in partnership with media agency MindShare, arena has developed an in-depth communication strategy around the Planet Water brand platform in the key markets of Italy, Germany, France, and the United States. The campaign includes comprehensive programmatic digital assets as well as above-the-line TV (15sec) and print advertising targeted towards different consumer clusters “Active Sportspeople*” and “Conscious Consumers*” that share a connection with an aquatic lifestyle in all of its various forms.
Supplementing this vision, arena has also carried the Planet Water messaging and creative inspiration to exclusive lifestyle and casual apparel, complementing the technical and performance products that are synonymous with the brand’s heritage and DNA.
Details of the campaign can be viewed from March 22nd on its dedicated landing page https://www.arenasport.com/planetwater; the official hashtag is #PlanetWater. Press materials will be distributed through sponsored clubs and swimming pools, and will be used in POP materials to showcase arena’s sales booths and stores.
*Source DOXA, beachwear consumer segmentation, 2021
