Detroit-based Shinola gives back to athlete community and gets brand representation in the process
Shinola, a luxury design brand, partnered with Athlytic to create a valuable social media strategy. Athlytic sought out local athletes to carry out this influencer campaign, and they posted social media content that has high engagement rates.
Shinola, a Detroit-based luxury design company, knew that it wanted to establish a stronger presence in the Gen-Z market while giving back to the community that helped build it.
To accomplish that, they came to Athlytic.
Shinola saw an opportunity during graduation season, noticing a trend of people buying watches as gifts. With upcoming graduations at Michigan and Michigan State, they aimed to attract customers to their Detroit and Ann Arbor stores by partnering with student athletes. As a special feature, they offered custom engravings exclusively for two weeks to in-store watch purchasers.
Athlytic played a pivotal role in crafting a compelling campaign idea: having athletes gift a watch to a graduating senior on their team. This campaign effectively embodied Shinola's goals. Additionally, we proposed meaningful engravings for the watches, such as "Forever Go Blue" and "Spartan for life."
Athlytic found 10 active-athlete ambassadors and 10 graduating athletes that were gifted custom Shinola watches with one ask: post their reaction
Background
The power of organic content
The active athletes’ content resonated with their followers, earning over
675,000
Impressions
25.5%
Engagement rate
(3-5% is average engagement rate on influencer social media posts)
Sentiment
The athlete’s content is the primary value driver, but one thing that occurs time and time again is press loving the act of empowering athletes.
Shinola’s campaign got picked up by 3 press agencies from across the nation: NIL Newsstand, Local 4 Detroit, and Sportscourt. The sentiment of the comments speaks for itself:
We make it too easy
Shinola partnered with Athlytic based on our reputation to make deals like this easy. Sure enough, the deal was done efficiently, being completed in just 2 weeks including production and ship time.
Moreover, because of the efficiency Athlytic provides with our product handling most of the administration, costs were low compared to other marketing options. This campaign realized a $0.029 cost per view, compared to an online ad norm of $0.05.
Conclusion
Athlytic was thrilled to facilitate this NIL marketing campaign as another business based in Detroit. Shinola was a great partner and the student athletes posted amazing content that helped their brand and Shinola’s, creating mutual value.
Ultimately, this was another great example of how creator-athletes can create highly engaging content that fans respond to better than any other form of social media marketing.
