City of Eugene Recreation · Eugene Marathon
Couch to 5K or Half Marathon
Thirteen weeks of training that took first-time runners to the Eugene 5K and half marathon start line.
View campaign video
The overview
A community-focused campaign following local residents as they trained for a 5K or half marathon — repositioning running from a performance goal into an accessible, social experience, and filling the classes to prove it.
The campaign film
The timeline
- Week 1 · January
The info session
A room full of people who'd never called themselves runners, learning what the next thirteen weeks would ask of them.
- Week 4 · February
Training in the dark
The hardest stretch — cold, wet, and long after sunset. The cohort kept showing up under the lights.
- Week 8 · March
Finding their stride
Lighter evenings and longer runs. By spring, a group of strangers had become a community.
- Race day · April
The Eugene Marathon
The long training miles pointed here — the start line thousands of runners share.
Strategy
Couch to 5K or Half Marathon is a content and engagement campaign built around the City of Eugene Recreation's new distance-running program. It documents the lived experience of participants moving from hesitation to confidence through structured outdoor training and shared community support.
Rather than framing running as a performance goal, the campaign positions it as an accessible, social, place-based experience — one that helps residents connect to their bodies, their city, and each other.
Audience
- Primary: beginners and returning runners considering a structured program.
- Secondary: community members interested in wellness offerings, and partners in the local running ecosystem.
Goals
- Raise awareness of Recreation's health and fitness offerings.
- Reduce the intimidation and barriers new runners face at the start line.
- Center community, coaching, and progress over performance.
- Drive program interest and registrations.
The call to action was simple: learn more and register for Recreation's running and wellness classes.
Touchpoints
The story followed a beginning → progress → milestone arc, filmed across multiple sessions over the length of the program. Capture mixed participant interviews, training b-roll, and the emotional beats — nerves, breakthroughs, pride — against real routes and race-day energy.
Rollout
A documentary-style hero film anchored the campaign, supported by short-form social cutdowns, photography, and quote-based storytelling for captions. Everything published across Eugene Rec's Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and web, timed to winter–spring registration and the start of the new year.
The rollout was planned with the Eugene Marathon as a collaborator from the start. Built for cross-promotion, the campaign ran through the Marathon's channels alongside Eugene Rec's — reaching a highly relevant local running audience and lending the program the credibility of a trusted community partner.
Yield
Participant-centered storytelling outperformed standard promotional messaging. Short-form video acted as the entry point, and the community tone lowered the intimidation that keeps new runners on the sidelines. Partner amplification carried the campaign well beyond Eugene Rec's own channels.
What I'd do next
- Add structured weekly-progress touchpoints to sustain momentum across the cohort.
- Track conversion more directly by tying registration to content timing.
- Build a reusable toolkit — clip, caption, quote, and promo templates — for future cohorts.
Photo gallery
