Under Armor has been supplying professional athletes in leagues such as the NFL, MMA and Unrivaled for years. He now wants to encourage athletes to play a role in new promotional efforts that go far beyond the typical television commercial.
The sportswear company is launching Lab96 Studios, a new in-house content studio that will showcase its brand and products in content that looks much more like traditional content. The goal, says Tyler Rutstein, senior vice president of global brand marketing and the Americas and executive producer of the new studio, is to do more to get in front of younger GenZ and Gen Alpha consumers — which, increasingly, isn’t a traditional ad injected into a TV program.
“We were kind of handcuffed saying, ‘Do a 30-second spot.’ Do a 15 second spot. This no longer exists,” says the executive. Under Armor is seeking “an open playbook where we can evolve our content strategy solely based on consumer habits and consumption across all platforms.” In some cases, this may involve creating half-hour YouTube videos or creating other long-form content with extensions designed for different social media. The studio will also help Under Amour strike alliances with independent creators, who may have an interest in coming up with ideas that will help boost the company’s reach among athletes.
The new studio made its unofficial debut in September with “We Are Football,” a short film featuring rapper Gunna and NFL athletes, emerging stars of women’s flag football. Other projects include a series focused on high school football in collaboration with Overtime, featuring IMG Academy and St. Frances Academy, as well as a documentary series on women’s flag football with SMAC Entertainment. The studio also recently launched a baseball series with Boardroom. Plans are underway to build a new state-of-the-art studio and podcast space at Under Armor’s Baltimore headquarters.
Under Armor isn’t abandoning traditional advertising, Rutstein says. At the same time, he adds, “We can take a movie that we could make and be three to five minutes long and still find ways to inject it into your 60-second NFL ad, right? That 60-second linear TV frame is just one part of a much larger content ecosystem,” he says. “The starting point was, ‘We need to make a big 60.’ The question now is, ‘How do you make a good movie, no matter how long it is?’ » And and and if we have to adapt it for linear TV, there are exact specifications, or there are what you might need if you want to run an ad from Instagram.
Lab96 Studios takes its name from the early days of Under Armour. The company was founded by Kevin Plank in 1996, and early employees were encouraged to feel like they were always experimenting.
