Move Your Body, Move Your Mind

An ongoing six-year partnership built from a unique brand idea, consistency and sustainable growth.

Context

We’ve had the joy of partnering with the brilliant team at ASICS since 2021. At the time, global sales were declining and the brand was losing ground in a fiercely competitive market.

This case study reflects our ongoing six-year partnership and ASICS’ strategic and creative transformation, rather than a single campaign. It also highlights the impact of consistently executing a long-term brand platform – and the results that consistency can deliver.

The Hook: Category vs. Audience

In 2020, as the pandemic took hold and mental health declined, millions of people who had never considered themselves runners began taking to the streets – often for the first time. For many, running was no longer about performance or competition, but a way to cope, clear their minds and feel better.

At the time, like much of the category, ASICS’ marketing focused on product technology, speed and physical achievement. But ASICS recognised a broader cultural shift: people were beginning to value movement not just for its physical benefits, but for its positive impact on mental wellbeing.

The Twist: Building equity in the brand's name

This disconnect between the category and changing consumer attitudes created a unique opportunity for ASICS: to meet a growing audience need by building equity in the brand’s own name.

Unknown to many, ASICS is an acronym for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano – “A Sound Mind In A Sound Body.” What had been a founding belief embedded in the brand’s DNA for more than 75 years had suddenly become a highly relevant and timely point of view. It gave ASICS a powerful platform to connect with a new generation of runners, differentiate itself from the category, and help revitalise the brand’s fortunes.

The Magic: From position to platform

Having established a credible, authentic and differentiated position for the brand, the creative expression needed to bring it to life in a tangible way. The first campaign we launched under the new platform was Upliftford – a real-world experiment designed to prove ASICS’ philosophy where it was needed most.

The ASICS State of Mind Index, a study of 8,000 people, identified Retford, Nottinghamshire, as the UK town with the lowest mental wellbeing score. In partnership with ASICS, we transformed the town into a playful, movement-powered gym: lamp posts became goal posts, and bus stops became “bus steps.”

By measuring residents’ moods before and after using facial-mapping technology, we demonstrated that even small amounts of movement could uplift both minds and communities – increasing the town’s mood score by 27%.

Scaling the movement: Six years of global momentum

Upliftford became the proof of concept that challenged the industry prediction that sports marketing must always centre on elite performance. It laid the strategic foundation for six years of global campaigns that have transformed ASICS from a traditional sports brand into a leading voice in the mental health conversation.

From subverting beauty advertising tropes to show that exercise can transform mind and body more powerfully than cosmetics, to our most recent global running and tennis campaign using the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations to express the link between movement and mindset, the platform has continually evolved without losing sight of what the brand stands for.

Each iteration has built on the last – evolving from local experiments into large-scale cultural activations and global brand campaigns – all helping to modernise ASICS’ 75-year-old philosophy for a new generation of conscious consumers.

Creativity with impact: The commercial result

We believe the most effective marketing comes from understanding where consumers are – not where the category assumes they should be – and building creative ideas that respond to that reality.

By moving beyond the prediction that sports marketing must focus solely on elite performance, together with ASICS, we created work that met people in a more relevant emotional space, delivering cultural impact and business results.

Since 2021, our partnership has contributed to ASICS’ exceptional growth, culminating in FY25 with a “new financial best” and a fifth consecutive year of record sales and profit growth.