The genesis of creative ideas here at Bandit comes in many forms. Sometimes it's a movie we're inspired by as was the case in our 2001: A Space Odyssey-themed ASICS collab. In other cases, it could be Tame Impala's Rushium tour opener which informed the sonic starting sequence of the Bandit Grand Prix. Our editorial for the Paris 2024 Olympics with SVG referenced statues of Greek Gods. So on and so forth...
Internally, there's no moment we feel greater pressure to deliver on than for the New York City Marathon. Being our hometown race, NYC is our Super Bowl. Every World Major has a unique vibe to it and with NYC, it's all about the intense, epic energy for us. Conducive to the sport or not, New York is a runner's city. Enter: Run City. We knew we wanted something that reflected this ethos on a surreal level—exaggerating the gritty textures of the city to meet the moment.
As with all our product designs, Ardith began with one of her patented mood boards nailing the vibe...
We discovered the song Surfrider Ill Est Vilaine a couple of months ago and immediately knew it was going to be the soundtrack to our NYC video. It carries perfect intensity that never stops building with notes of sirens and escalating heartbeats. Usually the song is one of our final ingredients to a video, but in this campaign, it was determined before the script was even written.
As we began jamming on script ideas, we aligned that we wanted to push ourselves to create something more complex and nuanced than we had ever before done knowing that you all would take the leap with us.
Looking at the mood board, our minds went straight to Blade Runner... Let's create a dystopian world for Run City.
The first core question we aimed to answer: how would one enter Run City? The 1997 Michael Douglas thriller, The Game, served as the perfect reference. In the film, Douglas is asked to participate in The Game with an invitation—our barista's business card. The Game quickly spirals out of control for both Douglas's character and the audience—neither of which know what's reality and what's part of the experience.
So we referenced The Game to have our hero character enter Run City, the Blade Runner-esque dystopia. But how would it end? We needed a twist... When The Program ejects, the lights turn on, and the windows go back to daylight, our hero thinks she's done and back in present-day Brooklyn... She hits the elevator with her sunglasses on and is ready for whatever comes next. But when she steps outside, suddenly she's somewhere she's never been before and greeted by the characters at the beginning of the video. Inception vibes, anyone? Truman Show, perhaps? We aren't quite sure ourselves, but these were all films that inspired the conclusion of the film...
Here are 5 fun things we slipped into the video you may not have noticed:
- The song playing on the radio at the very beginning of the video is the same song that Umi listens to when she reached orbit in our ASICS collab video.
- The radio announcer is Bandit OG/family Angelo Hay, who was in one of the first Bandit photoshoots ever when we were a humble sock brand.
- The newspaper Aliana holds up in the café scene is the 2022 Marathon Monday edition with Bandit OG Ping Zhu's custom illustrations.
- The barista behind the counter is Saint Vincent & The Grenadine's Olympian, Handal Roban.
- The CD-Rom our hero puts into the computer is a nod to our first ever performance campaign, Centricity.
We were fortunate to work with the great Samuel Jurkovič on the sound design of the video. Check out his very own BTS...
And without further adieu, here's some iPhone photos because we were sliiightly over budget (don't tell Nick) and had to sacrifice the BTS photographer (we miss you, Sam)...
