Worldwide Sneaker Day Lufthansa

WORLDWIDE SNEAKER DAY LUFTHANSA

Do you want to get your hands on a pair of limited edition Adidas Lufthansa sneakers? You can try your luck on eBay where a few pairs are currently going for around €100.

Or perhaps you are fortunate enough to be a Lufthansa employee, who could buy a pair.

In fact, if you really are a Lufthansa employee then you would have been able to wear your sneakers to work on 24 August, as the airline designated the day as “Worldwide Lufthansa Sneaker Day.”

The Lufthansa Adidas sneakers were first unveiled in February to coincide with both the new logo and brand (see our February issue), and also to celebrate 100 years of Lufthansa.

In an employee conference, Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr announced that all staff would be given a voucher so they could buy something with the new

Lufthansa look on it, which could be a pair of Lufthansa / Adidas sneakers, or another item.

According to the Handelsblatt newspaper, Spohr called the sneakers “my personal favourite.”

The shoes themselves are all white, with the blue Lufthansa crane on the side. They then come in either white and yellow laces.

They have been offered to employees at a series of pop-up stores around German airports. The most recent was on August 5th in Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Hamburg. From looking through Instagram, we can see that staff seem to love the shoes, with some posting that they’d like to wear them to work. And on ‘Worldwide Lufthansa Sneaker Day’ that became possible. Lufthansa did say that though it was preferable that staff wore the Adidas / Lufthansa shoes on the job, it wasn’t a requirement. When the shoes were originally launched in February, the German press made a parallel between the Adidas / Lufthansa collaboration, and another Adidas tie-up with the Berlin transport authority. The Berlin shoes sold for €180 and included a yearly travel pass, printed on the shoe itself. However only 500 were ever produced. That in itself is a concept airlines can build on. For example, a frequent flyer programme could partner with (e.g.) Mont Blanc pens, or order iPads engraved with a rewards number….the possibilities are endless. However, going back to the Lufthansa sneakers, this is a concept that really works and ticks a lot of boxes. It’s exclusive to staff, so they are getting something no one else has. The shoes actually look really good, and employees

seem to appreciate them. Sneakers are ultimately a fashion item, and LH staff members will want to be seen in them. And the global sneaker way in August was a great way to bring the whole collaboration to life.

See as well the SimpliLive show from August 23rd, where SimpliFlying CEO Shashank Nigam praised Lufthansa for coming up with a “brilliant idea, not only in co-branding, but in getting employees

excited about the new brand….Lufthansa needed to get the new logo out and assimilated into the staff as much as possible.”

OTHER AIRLINE SNEAKERS

Lufthansa of course isn’t the only airline to use sneakers as a marketing tactic. When Joon, the ‘millennial airline’ from Air France launched last year, one of the defining features was the uniform - including sneakers worn by cabin crew.

Meanwhile we featured KLM last year for producing a limited edition sneaker. The “KLM Amsterdam sneaker” was aimed at consumers in Nordic countries.

Anyone who booked a KLM flight to Amsterdam in March 2017 could win a pair of the shoes that came with an “I Amsterdam” City Card, including free entry to Amsterdam’s top museums and attractions.

Finally, easyJet produced a pair of sneakers as a fashion wearable and tried them out in Barcelona. The sneakers were programmed to take you on a walking tour of the city and they vibrated whenever you needed to turn left or right.