Fitness apparel brand Gymshark launched as a screen-printing operation in a garage in 2012 by Ben Francis and a group of his school friends. Today the company is generating annual sales of over £40 million with projected sales of £80 million this financial year. With customers in 180 countries, the brand is ever-expanding and owes a lot of its success to its online presence and community of influencers and customers, which the brand calls it's family. Understanding the influencer marketing strategy, and how it utilizes social influencers to create an emotional connection between the product and the consumer. (Parfrement, 2020)
In the early days of the brand, the Gymshark team decided to bring a new way of doing marketing to the world of gym. As Ben Francis was following a lot of famous gym YouTubers like Lex Griffin and Chris Lavado, he decided to send them a free sample of their product and ask them if they were keen to be sponsored by Gymshark. This was a big opportunity to enhance visibility as they were publishing video watched by million of people that were interested in the gym. Nowadays, thinking about this kind of strategy is nothing revolutionary as every influencer on any kind of social media is sponsored by several different brands. However, back in 2012, it was new and easy to sponsor influencers and create a post with a huge conversion rate.
« At the time, no one else was doing influencer marketing. It came totally naturally to us because we were just fans of the guys, and we dreamed to see them with our products » - Francis in an interview on his youtube channel
As they saw that influencer marketing was working great and people start to buy more of their product they decided to contact more influencers to continue growing and creating relationships with them.
According to recent research, Influencer Marketing has a huge impact on their followers. In fact, 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations of their center of interest and 40% of 16 to 30 years old have purchased due to influencer posts on a different social media platform like Youtube or Instagram. Gymshark is the perfect example of millennial marketing done right (Sonali, 2020)
One of the main goal of Ben Francis was creating a real family spirit around his brand. He wanted to bring together people that shared the same passion for fitness and values; and in helping others, along with a vision to grow into something bigger than themselves.
Stephanie O’Neill, working at GymShark as possible at Public Relations explains how the ethic of their early days remains a core value in all strategy: “It’s all about being authentic. The vast majority of Gymshark ambassadors were once fans and consumers of the brand. Who better to represent the brand than those who actually love Gymshark?”
Comments