The Influencers That Influencers Follow

Influencer program launch. 2017.
Global Digital Marketing, ASICS

The Setup

ASICS wanted into macro influencer space. Not the people with the biggest follower counts, the people those people follow. Photographers, parkour athletes, yoga teachers, sneaker customizers. The ones who set taste rather than chase it. You can't buy those people. They'll take the money once and never mention you again, and their audiences can smell a paid post from a mile off. So the play was community instead of contracts. Build actual crews in actual cities, give them a reason to belong to each other, and let the content come from that. The launch had to make the crew real before anyone posted anything.

So the play was community instead of contracts. Build real crews in real cities, give them a reason to belong to each other, and let the content come from that. We built the launch around the Tokyo Marathon so some of the crew could run it. Everyone else came for the weekend around it and celebrated the runners on the course.

The Challenge

Two crews from two countries, strangers to each other and to the brand, and a few days to make them a community rather than a roster.

Three decisions carried it.

Go to Tokyo, not a resort. Japan is where the brand comes from. Taking the crew to the source made their connection to ASICS something they experienced instead of something they were told. A retreat anywhere else is a trip. In Tokyo it's an origin.

Let them lead. Members taught each other in their own disciplines rather than sitting through brand presentations. The yoga teacher taught yoga. The photographer led the photo walk. That flips brand-to-creator into creator-to-creator, with ASICS as the reason they're all in the room.

Build for UGC, not for a campaign. This was before video took over social, so the output was photography, and most of it came from the crew rather than from us. My production crew documented alongside them. The point was to leave with a community that kept posting, not with a content library that ran out.

What I Owned

  • The Tokyo retreat as the founding moment for the crew.

  • Programming built around the four SMSB pillars: creativity, movement, community, mindfulness.

  • Production crew on the ground running scheduled activities and capturing content.

  • The UGC model and content strategy, photography-led.

  • Chapter launches in the UK, Paris, South Korea, and Singapore.

  • Total budget of 35,000 USD.

How it Landed

The crew launched across four chapters. More than a year later, a Paris member was still opening with Tokyo, unprompted, in a Highsnobiety profile, describing teaching her first-ever yoga class there.

In the press

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All product and lifestyle photography appears courtesy of the respective photographers and the ASICS Corporation.