Over the last three years, R.A.D has built a large and devoted fan base for its training footwear brand, creatively partnered by London agency Fluoro. The original shoe, the R.A.D® ONE, disrupted the performance footwear sector with its retro-futuristic aesthetic and lifestyle appeal. Now the company stands toe-to-toe with the biggest footwear brands in the world, on its own terms.

For the much-anticipated launch of the R.A.D® ONE V2, Fluoro has worked into the ‘R.A.D® Delivery Systems’ concept with a creative campaign that builds excitement for the new innovations in the shoe design. It speaks to the key moment of an online purchase – its arrival in real life – and feeds into the drop culture that the brand is built on. Fluoro used the Delivery Systems concept as a metaphor for ‘delivering the future of innovation’, and created a fantastical 3D realm where the shoe is engineered – a sort of bio-organic surf shack-meets Willy Wonka-meets nineties rave.

Moving image borrows from the world of gaming, with the product constructed, rotated and displayed to highlight its specifications. The shoes are seen turning in space above the sea against a pastel sky to a Pink Floyd-inspired psychedelic rock soundtrack being played as if on a radio in the background of solar powered machinery soundscape. Capsules are dispatched into the archive (R.A.D® ONE has only been released as limited editions and are never reissued) and the R.A.D® ONE V2 is revealed – its construction built up in layers. The new design heroes the original colourway of Off White + Sunny Lime, giving fans a chance to own these in a new incarnation.

Fluoro is known for shunning overproduction in favour of a stylised lo-fi realness that people hunger for in today’s tide of shiny high-spec media. The ship that dispatches the trainers nods to the cult 80s film Flight of the Navigator – one of the first Hollywood movies to extensively use CGI. Retro references from Y2K and earlier combine with future-facing design to create a look and feel that is uniquely R.A.D.

‘R.A.D® Delivery Systems’ presents a rich shopping experience for a brand with no permanent physical outlets, but which lives online and in real-world activations. Fluoro created a comprehensive graphic toolkit to cement the wide world of assets and executions together. R.A.D’s guerilla-style US launch tour sees original Ford F59 delivery step vans, caked in bespoke R.A.D® ONE V2 stickers Fluoro have created, showing up at specified locations and selling shoes and merch out of the back. And the campaign video shows athletes decked out in bespoke Delivery Systems apparel using the Fluoro graphic identity, filmed on doorbell cameras, emptying the vans, garden hopping, running, skateboarding and delivering R.A.D® ONE V2 trainers to peoples’ doors.

Showing athletes in everyday environments making contact with fans takes the product out of the gym and situates the training journey in people’s wider lives. But the campaign steers clear of meaningless ‘athleisure’ unchained from achievement. It leans into performance, without fixating on it.

As an agile team working in close collaboration with R.A.D, Fluoro has dynamically developed brand assets in response to the fast-moving development of the business and product releases. Brand and advertising are viewed as a continuum, with all activities supporting a compelling overall experience.

Tim Smith, Fluoro Founder and R.A.D Creative Director said: “We loved working with R.A.D to create the Delivery System campaign, collaborating to bridge the divides between fashion, training and creative expression. We tapped into our own interests and shared cultural references to fashion a hyperreal world that brings innovation, energy and excitement to the drop in a way that content coldly created for ‘audiences’ could never do.”

Benjamin Massey, R.A.D founder said: “Since the brand’s inception, Fluoro has helped R.A.D build a devoted community from serious athletes to style-driven brand fans. The agency devised our distinctive retro-futuristic aesthetic within a sharp design discipline, which we can activate wherever our community meets us.”