The amazing thing about researching and enjoying the work you do around sneakers is when you locate a story that has connective fibers. Yesterday I wrote about York Athletics’ under-utilization of YouTube:
When Brands Underutilize Platforms, How Do You Get the Message? York Athletics
In that article, I discovered Joe Buckner. I took a second to follow him on Twitter and began to do a dive after locating a link in his profile. What I found next was a deeper connection to fitness and the sneaker and apparel industry. It’s a connection that makes Joe’s appearance in the recent short series by York, even more authentic than even I considered:
Lululemon x Joe Buckner
The above video is an 8 minute short under the Lululemon banner. In 2019, Lulu was working on reaching across the aisle. The brand known for its yoga apparel for women, was (and still is), working hard to capture a male demographic. The video above starts at the 1:35 moment. In the video, Joe is wearing York Athletics sneakers. It’s the kind of subtle “LL Cool J rocking FUBU in the GAP commercial,” moment that is only caught if the person watching knows of the brand. I know about York, not many people do. The video has been watched 4,800+ times. This is a solid number for a long-form video of 8 minutes. The team would have been better served breaking it up into 2 minute drops. York has done a break up of their video content, but it’s only available on social.
Expanding Into a New Demographic
The most difficult thing to do is expand market share into a segment that isn’t familiar with you. Lululemon in many ways did what Merrell did with people like Akuna Robinson and Dwayne Fields:
Merrell doesn’t have a Black demographic, but in the sneaker industry, they’ve done some of the most amazing copy and ad work featuring Black stories. Ad work doesn’t have to be for a specific demographic, just because the people working on the project and featured are Black, but let’s be real. The Black demographic is an untapped market for every footwear brand not named Nike. The Brand loyalty of Black people isn’t a hidden topic of discussion, and neither is the GDP. It behooves companies to find an access point to the Black dollar, but it doesn’t make sense when brands have to fight Nike… and there lies the sauce. Growing a company requires:
- an introduction to new demographics
- raising prices
- going direct to consumer
- adding SKUs
There really isn’t much that can be done to grow market share. Which makes this discussion all the more compelling.
Joe Buckner https://twitter.com/MrJoeBuckner
On a weekend where every sneaker site in the country will be rolling out coverage of an Air Jordan 1 shoe co-designed by Fragment and Travis Scott, I’m finding the story of a brother who is utilizing his history, with an emphasis on fitness, inspiring and worthy of sharing. I’m a reseller, so I know the value of the limited Jordan shoe and how much I could I have made if I took on pairs that found their way into the streets of Memphis. I could be up 100,000 dollars. But, I didn’t take on that inventory. I never do. I always pass when I get contacted for those items. Like Joe, I went down the wrong path and paid for it. I changed my life by joining the Navy and then playing college basketball. Joe hits me in the gut. I can feel every word he says.
The problem is although he has been a TedX speaker and he runs the gym “Beautifully Savage”, both of these campaigns, in my observation, underperform. Not because they aren’t very good. They underperform because everyone is utilizing strategies created from the playbook of let’s IG, Facebook and social media this. Lululemon has exactly ZERO links in the description on the Joe Buckner video. This means there isn’t any potential CTR. York isn’t utilizing YouTube at all, only social. Joe on his:
website, probably doesn’t have anyone to carry the discussion over to his site and through his own social. On a weekend where I could easily get more hits by writing an article using the keywords around a certain Jordan, I’ve chosen to write this post because it’s important and needs to be shared. Maybe, just maybe, these brands will begin to understand that fighting for marketshare with youth culture, isn’t where they should be. Maybe they should be building a strategy to hit people like me.
Use the links throughout to discover more about each brand mentioned.