Fitness Influencer Marketing and Women Empowerment
Influencer marketing is a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers–individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche. Within the last year during the pandemic there was an increase in fitness and health influencers. The social distancing necessitated by COVID-19, lead to a rise in consumer need for at-home fitness workouts and ways to improve their health/wellness from the comfort of their home. It was during this time that many fitness influencers pivoted to doing their own workouts on IG Live or creating their own online platforms. A pair of influencer bloggers that became a great guide to online workouts was @sweatsandthecity by Elizabeth and Dale.
I’ve been following them since before the pandemic and their main focus was providing in-door studio class reviews of different studio workout classes either in NYC or LA. Overall, they focus on providing reviews of the workout classes they attend and also focus their content in talking about health and wellness. Since workout studios were closed during the pandemic, they shifted to create a guide of LIVE or On-Demand workout classes that were being offered by different fitness professional all around the US. This guide was extremely helpful for those fitness professionals as well as for people looking for different at home workout options.
@sweatsandthecity recently launched a partnership with @underarmourwomen to promote their United We Win collection. Under Armour is a very well-known line of sports apparel for people of all ages. With March being Women’s History Month Under Armour dropped a limited International Women’s Day collection honoring athletes, teammates and community partners. They partnered with many fitness influencers to help promote the launch of this collection and celebrate women. They promoted the campaign and the new collection across all their social media platforms mostly showcasing the different outfits as well as the strong and empowering message. As Mark mentions in chapter 6 of his Marketing Rebellion book, a shared meaning is a belief that both the brand and consumers have about a brand’s values or broad philosophy. Having a brand like Under Armour take a step and focusing a full collection of clothes and partnering with women fitness influencers to promote women and empowerment shows how a company takes a stand in their messaging and who they work with.
The partnership with Sweats and the City and Under Armour is a great partnership due to the massive female following that Sweats has as well as their focus on fitness and health. Sweats and the City has focused on promoting multiple fitness and wellness influencers like themselves whom are women and starting their own business, specially during the pandemic. Doing this campaign with Under Armour during Women’s History month contributes to who they are as influencers as well showing their over 106K followers the great brands they work with.
During the month of March they posted two post with different outfits of the collection and had captions focused on talking about the outfits as well as women empowerment and feeling strong. Their post on March 7th focused on promoting Women’s History Month as well as talking about how to feel empowered and strong in the Under Armour clothes they wear. The message doesn’t feel as they are so focused in promoting or trying to sell a product, it’s a more subtle message talking about how they feel wearing the outfits and how it can make you feel. The CTA at the end is to get their followers to comment on what things make them feel empowered and strong. The majority of the comments are people saying how much they love the outfits and how things like working out and having a routine makes them feel strong. Their post had over 2K likes and over 40 comments and was the most liked post in the month of March.
When looking at this campaign and the conversations on the posts we can see how the human driven marketing activities like social media conversations or online experts can influence peoples purchasing decisions. Sweats and the city has a very strong following who like to engage with their brand and take their recommendations seriously. Also seeing the kinds of partnerships they have done in the past with different workout apparel companies their followers can see how they focus on very high-quality clothes and doing partnerships with companies that are going promote female empowerment.
Health and fitness brands see better results from influencer marketing when partnering with influencers on a long-term basis. The partnership with Under Armour and Sweats and the City proved to be an effective influencer marketing one due to the length of the campaign. It was also a very beneficial partnership for both based on their brand values with Under Armour focusing on Women’s History Month and promoting empowerment and Sweats and the City being a female focused influencer duo that promotes fitness, health and wellness.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Reference:
Chen, J. (2021, February 8). What is influencer marketing: How to develop your strategy. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/influencer-marketing/
A. (2021, January 20). Influencer marketing in the health and fitness industry [Report 2020]. ZINE Blog. https://blog.zine.co/influencer-marketing-health-fitness-industry-report-2020/
Schaefer, M. W. (2019). Marketing rebellion: the most human company wins. essay, Schaefer Marketing Solutions.
