YORK Athletics Mfg. is a 3rd generation family owned performance footwear brand based out of Boston, Massachusetts. Backed by footwear industry heavy weights, they’re blazing a new trail in the health & wellness community with their ‘Out of Step’ mindset and fighting spirit. #footwearforfighters
I’ve long known about York Athletics. I don’t own a pair, which probably has more to do with me having my own boxing equipment in the house so I train barefoot, but I’ve known about the “fighter’s footwear company” for a few years. In this time, I don’t visit the site often for updates, because they are a company that isn’t focused on creating a lot of hyped releases. They have remained consistent in the product they’ve created. Their primary sneaker is The Henry:
The running shoe is equally at home on the track as it is in the gym for heavy bag work. I’m not writing this post to discuss The Henry. I’m writing this post because while I was browsing Facebook, I ran into a sponsored ad featuring “Joe Buckner, everyday fighter, father, owner of Beautifully Savage boxing gym, coach, a force of positivity.”
Finding authentic representations in marketing isn’t as common as you’d think. Marketing in the sneaker industry revolves around giving some famous person money to wear the gear and influence kids to buy your stuff. When I see a moving video, I share it. The problem is York Athletics, like most brands who are trying to be where the people are, are utilizing IG and Facebook. When the sponsored ad is shown, it becomes difficult to find it again because it’s an ad. Since you have to float between IG and Facebook, you can potentially never run into the ad again.
Underutilizing YouTube
What I’ve found over the last few years is that YouTube is a vital cog in branding and advertising. The reason is simple. Most people use Google for search. Google owns YT. When a search takes place Video is now ranking equally as high as content from a site. Why is this important? IG and Facebook are not indexed. They aren’t searchable via Google. Most traffic arrives to websites, where the purchase happens, via Direct and Search. It behooves brands and retailers to have a YouTube strategy. Yorks Athletics only has 112 subscribers. They last utilized YouTube over two years ago. The series they are sharing featuring Joe Buckner are on par with the work done by Merrell. That’s high praise coming from me. I’m writing this, not to rag on York, but to introduce a discussion and to share this work with you. If you decide to dig a bit deeper, cool. I hope you will.