Gymshark's North American expansion ramps up with its first local marketing campaign
Gymshark has launched its debut North American campaign as part of its US expansion efforts.
The ‘United We Sweat’ campaign centers around Gymshark athletes and was created by Ultra Brand Studio, the strategy firm behind Nike and EA campaigns.
Featured athletes include UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou, trainer Austin Dotson, American footballer George Bamfo, swimmer Haven Shepherd, powerlifter Lya Bavoil, and author of the Running Fat Chef blog, Latoya Shauntay.
Sennai Atsbeha, Gymshark’s vice president of brand marketing, said: “Each of our athletes has different fitness focuses but share a constant commitment to their community, dedication to the process, and responsibility to put in the work every day to be the best version of themselves.”
Chief brand officer at Gymshark, Noel Mack, said Gymshark has good brand awareness so the campaign is instead about “brand education and really driving home what makes Gymshark special”.
He added: “This is bigger than a brand campaign, it’s about people understanding the power of unity and fitness. Since Gymshark’s beginning we’ve been bringing people together under the banner of fitness and conditioning and to this day uniting people plays a huge part of our purpose, and right now we truly believe that unity is needed more than ever.”
The campaign runs across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and, Snapchat along with TV spots on programmatic and connected TV.
The digital-first fitness apparel brand opened its US office in Denver in 2019 and opened its first US warehouse in California in June. The company has plans to open a further three warehouses over the next 12-months.
Gymshark is planning to run “hyper-local” campaigns giving the US its own marketing strategy based around local fitness communities. “We are super focused on continuing to diversify, expand into new fitness spaces, and build with grassroots partners as we know our message is one that resonates with a wide variety of people and communities,” Atsbeha said.
Its US media plan is to tie with “partners that share an aligned value proposition” instead of going for mass reach – examples include collaborations with sports publishers Overtime TV and Wave Sports + Entertainment.