Black Friday is always seen as an opportunity for brands. For most, they see it as an opportunity to make a quick buck and boost their sales numbers as they head into the festive period. They’ll spend a big chunk of their marketing budget sending out gifts to influencers in hopes of seeing that investment return in the form of sales. Sometimes though, a brand bucks the trend and does something different.
That’s exactly what the team at Puresport did.
Instead of doing the usual gifting, they flipped it on their community and asked them to help those more in need. The ‘Gift it Back’ campaign saw Puresport send out empty gift boxes, asking their network of creators, influencers and friends to fill them with any unwanted and unused sportswear gifts so that they could be donated to Greenhouse Sports.
We sat down with the team to find out more about the origins of the campaign, how it all came together, the risk, and the results.
“It started with a conversation in August, between Hilly, our Head of Marketing and Brad, our Ops Lead about what Black Friday would look like this year.
Recently, we had wrapped up a successful Electrolytes campaign, where some core ambassadors and athletes received a gift box including Ultra Electrolytes.
With a stack of leftover boxes in the corner of the office, Brad jokingly suggested that we just send those out again. And that’s when it clicked for Hilly.
With a background in Influencer Marketing at Gymshark, Hilly was acutely aware of a type of waste that we don’t often see talked about. Marketing excess.
Especially around Black Friday, brands compete to earn space on Influencers’ feeds. Unfortunately, this competition has turned into a battle of who can send the most items, or the most extravagant PR package, rather than what’s actually inside the box. This excess turns into waste – items that are never used, and stashed away in cupboards to never be seen again.
So the idea to send an empty box was born then and there. Our empty box and return label, is your opportunity to give back to those who need it most.”
Having the idea is one thing, but it’s only one step in the process. So how do you start to pull together a campaign like this? Well, it’s something that takes the whole team getting involved.
“Hilly presented the idea to the team, alongside a four-phase plan, spanning Aug – Nov highlighting which tasks would need to be completed, when and by who for this to come together. It was a full team effort;
Bradley arranged the box logistics and manufacturing, the ambassador team managed the influencer reach out, Hilly and James (Head of Brand) defined what the content plan was, Lucy on our Community Team spearheaded the drop-off run club, and Emma, our Graphic Designer created the Box design.”
As you can imagine, when you’re going against the grain and attempting to do something different, it can be a bit of a nerve-racking time…
“Definitely. Hilly recently sent an email to all the creators who took part where he said the following;
“When I had the idea to send an empty box, back in August, to be honest, I was a little nervous about how it would land with people. A brand, asking its community for things at a time when other brands are throwing out discounts, and gifting was a little daunting”.
Not only that but as a business with shareholders and commercial targets, the importance of our November sales period was crucial to this year’s targets, and yet the sale never once featured on our social feed, because we were talking about our bigger purpose.
As a team, we had the utmost faith that we were doing something bigger than us, and as long as we executed on our health check tasks at the bottom of the funnel, we would come out on top.”
The finale of the campaign saw Puresport use their weekly Saturday run club as a delivery service with members of their community each taking a box and running with them across the city to deliver them to Greenhouse Sports in person.
“Our community is our DNA. That’s who Puresport is. Yes, we sell supplements, but Puresport isn’t just a run club or a supplement company, we’re a movement. A movement towards a better way of living. So when we stood up there at our Saturday Run Club, asking everyone to grab a box and run 12km to a charity location to drop them off, we had nothing but positive responses from people. For some, it was their first time running that distance, and they chose to do it with us. Our community is special, and we’ll always be on hand to support others.”
The result of the campaign? Well, the numbers speak for themselves.
200 of the boxes the brand sent out were returned full and donated to Greenhouse Sports, providing for those in our society that need it most and giving them access to sport. The campaign also went viral across social media, with 3.2 million owned content views, 10,000 new followers from one TikTok video and over half a million likes across their channels.
There’s always going to be a risk to running a campaign like this, to deviate from the well-known path that every other brand follows. What’s clear is that Puresport’s brand values rise above their need to make sales. Of course sales are important, businesses have to make money to survive, but sometimes there’s a higher calling, to do something more for those less fortunate. This is a perfect example of that.
Thanks to the team at Puresport for showing us a little bit of the behind the scenes. As we head into 2025, we’d love to do more of this kind of stuff so if there’s a brand or campaign you’d love to learn more about, hit us up on our socials @BehindSport.
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