IOE, UNEP AND ADIDAS RUNTASTIC LAUNCH RUN WILD, A DIGITAL RUNNING CHALLENGE WHERE USERS COMPETE WITH A WILD SNOW LEOPARD IN MONGOLIA
Pasching, October 16, 2019 – Today, Adidas Runtastic, one of the world’s leading companies in the digital health and fitness space, releases an exciting digital running challenge that lets its users connect with and race against a real wild snow leopard.
adidas Runtastic, Internet of Elephants, the Snow Leopard Trust and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) have teamed up to activate millions of runners worldwide to take action for the world’s most endangered species.
How it Works
The Run Wild Snow Leopard campaign kicks off on October 23, International Snow Leopard Day, and will run for 12 days until November 3, 2019. During this time, users of the free adidas Running app can track their runs and compete with Uuliin Ezen, a wild snow leopard from Mongolia. Uuliin, who is tracked using GPS technology for scientific purposes by the Snow Leopard Trust and its partners, will post his daily running statistics in the adidas Running in-app Challenges feature. Users are encouraged to push themselves to outrun Uuliin’s daily distance. Apart from daily updates on his athletic performance, daily activities and challenges in finding food and surviving poaching, Uuliin will also provide users with the opportunity to contribute to the conservation work that keeps him safe.
Why it matters
People living in cities have fewer opportunities to interact with nature. This can negatively affect their physical and mental health. Finding innovative ways to create a meaningful connection between urban people and wild nature is, therefore, a great priority.
Through the use of real data and daily updates from Uuliin himself, Run Wild aims to create a positive and powerful connection between runners and endangered species, to grow their understanding of the complexity of conservation, and to harness support for the hard work it takes to keep animals like Uuliin safe.
With 150+ million registered users worldwide, the potential for utilizing a platform like adidas Runtastic for conservation purposes should not be underestimated.
A COLLABORATION FOR IMPACT
The Run Wild campaign is a collaboration between adidas Runtastic, Internet of Elephants, the Snow Leopard Trust, and UNEP’s Wild for Life campaign. adidas Runtastic leverages its 150+ million registered users, platform and marketing power; Internet of Elephants co-creates the concept, provides engagement expertise and conservation-focused storytelling, and UNEP and the Snow Leopard Trust open up their campaigning muscle, research data, and supply conservation expertise.
The Snow Leopard Trust has been conducting long-term ecological studies in Mongolia on snow leopards, including Uuliin, by collaring and following these endangered species and using GPS data to better understand their ecological environment and behavior in order to ensure their survival.
Internet of Elephants harvested this movement data to create exciting ways for people to get involved in the conservation of Uuliin and his fellow snow leopards. The daily updates, storytelling, and engagement mechanisms translate Uuliin’s movement data and conservation facts into a personal relationship with a wild animal thousands of miles away.
adidas Runtastic integrates the data provided into the app and enables users to compare their daily runs with a real snow leopard. To ensure the safety of the animals, adidas Runtastic uses only historical movement data and does not disclose the actual GPS locations of any animals.
Through Run Wild, Uuliin will help raise awareness of and support from millions of adidas Runtastic users for the snow leopard cause and the Snow Leopard Trust.
QUOTES
"I am very proud of this campaign and really excited that after the huge success of adidas ‘Run for the Oceans’ we will create again positive impact to our planet through the power of digital,” said Chris Thaller, adidas Runtastic Head of Creative Projects and initiator of the adidas Runtastic Run for the Oceans and Run Wild campaign. “Based on our company’s mission that through sport, we have the power to change lives, we are trying to harness the immense power of our digital platform to create a positive change toward sustainability and to protect our planet and all its inhabitants.”
Gautam Shah, Internet of Elephants CEO and founder, says: “We urgently need to engage millions more people with wildlife and nature if we want to turn the tide of the extinction of wildlife, and in order to do that we have to be unconventional and daring. We believe the key is to connect people to the stories of individual wild animals, to make it fun, and to do so on channels where people are already doing things they love. Our collaboration with adidas Runtastic enables us to bring all these engagement mechanisms together to build an army of urban conservationists. We’re incredibly excited that adidas Runtastic is opening up their platform of tens of millions of users for conservation purposes.”
“Snow leopards are one of the most emblematic species of mountain regions. Yet their habitats are under unprecedented pressure due to climate change and related drivers such as land-use change and habitat degradation, shift, fragmentation or loss, as well as increased human-wildlife conflict and poaching," said Matthias Jurek, Programme Management Officer UNEP dealing with mountain ecosystems. "With this unique partnership, we hope to help to boost the general public’s interest in these as well as other vulnerable species,” he added.