The US salad chain Sweetgreen teamed up with athlete ambassador and tennis star Naomi Osaka for a New York City centred outdoor brand campaign focused on health and wellness and aimed at leveraging spiking tennis interest around the 2021 US Open.
As tennis fans return to the stands, Sweetgreen’s out of home spots rolled out across the city from 30 August and celebrate the healthy quick service restaurant chain’s partnership with Osaka promote the player’s personally branded ‘bowl’ menu item and its green tea product which she helped create with the brand.
Timed to celebrate the start of the US Open – which runs from 30 August to 12 September at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens – the OOH initiative spreads across the city and was orchestrated jointly in-house and by US outdoor specialist MilkMoney.
The health-conscious food chain campaign execution messages including ‘Eat like a pro’, ‘Icons eat their greens’ and ‘Queens get their greens’.
As well as the billboard execution series, Sweetgreen also erected a brand pop-up in Union Square Plaza where it is giving away limited-edition merchandise signed by the tennis star and the local campaign is also supported by social media content.
Hey NYC: we're at 14th St + University until 2pm giving away 8 limited edition hats signed by our friend @NaomiOsaka. You need a code word to grab one… head to our IG Stories to find out pic.twitter.com/w5ixTKZBQ2
— sweetgreen (@sweetgreen) August 30, 2021
.@NaomiOsaka is back on the courts in NYC, and we're celebrating by bringing her bowl back—along with some other surprises we're cooking up. https://t.co/fyPoSZJkDG pic.twitter.com/YO4g3OkrXW
— sweetgreen (@sweetgreen) August 30, 2021
Comment:
Sweetgreen is one of Osaka’s sponsors who has continued to firmly support the player by championing mental health after Osaka stepped back from competition earlier in the year prior to the French Open and this latest initiative further demonstrates its continued support.
The campaign follows on from Sweetgreen’s previous Osaka fronted work which launched the brand and it also runs whilst press reports suggest that Sweetgreen is planning an initial public offering of stock within a few months. The chain is valued at around $1.8bn.
While Sweetgreen’s US Open campaign focuses on wellness, it rolls out amongst other tournament marketing promotions backing other causes such as diversity, equity and inclusion (such as The United States Tennis Association’s own ‘Be Open/Let’s Tennis’ campaign).
At last year’s US Open, Osaka wore a series of masks featuring the names of Black people who were victims of police brutality and other racist violence, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Trayvon Martin.
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