Iconosquare has teamed up with Hivency to bring you this case study, with an extra special focus on ASICS’ influencer marketing success story.
"Influencer marketing: overview
2019 ended with optimism for the sports industry. Global revenue was supposed to grow from $129 billion to $135.3 billion in 2020 (Statista). No one knew that 2020 was going to be a more challenging year than expected, and, unfortunately, the sports industry was no exception.
With the beginning of the pandemic and the consequent cancellation of many events, the industry was brutally affected. Consumers had all of a sudden less income and fewer opportunities to purchase products from this industry.
Nevertheless, compared to other apparel, it can be stated that sportswear outperformed given the situation. In September 2020, it reached higher market capitalizations compared to the end of 2019, and this is sustained since then. (McKinsey).
In fact, since the beginning of the pandemic, sports marketing has been forced to shift its strategies towards different ones. With sports events cancelled, the traditional events sponsorships and merchandising actions that companies usually chose to promote their products were impossible to implement. The sporting goods industry needed to rethink its way of communicating.
Although digitalization had already started in this industry, the sanitary situation accelerated the process. It opened the door to influencer marketing. Not being able to associate themselves with clubs, leagues or events as they used to, brands chose to work more closely with influencers. Professional athletes, sports experts or even lifestyle content creators have proven to be the best way of reaching the audiences.
Influencer marketing allows brands to reach their audience in a quick and efficient way. In order to do so, it is important to determine which content creators are most aligned with the targeted audience. By identifying the correct influencers, a brand will be able to reach the influencers’ online communities in an effective way, and hence reach a large number of potential consumers with minimal effort."
