Objectives

At Under Armour, our mission is simple: to make you better.

For the past 21 years, we have been breaking barriers in the field of performance apparel, footwear and accessories. Founded in 1996 with a single sweat-wicking t-shirt that eventually changed the sports apparel industry, Under Armour was founded on a vision to inspire you with performance solutions you never knew you needed, but can't imagine living without. From a new footwear cushioning platform called HOVR, to being home to the world's largest digital health and fitness community, Under Armour has showcased an unrelenting commitment to innovation.

We bring the same ethos to our work on platforms like Instagram, where we aim to provide exclusive content and stories from the the greatest athletes in the world.

In 2017, we set two main goals for Instagram:

1. Driver greater on platform engagement with athlete and product focused content
2. Increase distribution to drive greater reach for our brand content.

And we didn't just hit our goals, we knocked them out of the park.

Strategy and Execution

Our audience is young, aggressive and athletic and enjoys having access to behind the scenes content and footage from anywhere at any time. We also know our audience enjoys live sport and interacting with those moments on social. Finally, our audience wants to be the first to know about our latest and greatest products. Because of this, we developed a three pronged Instagram strategy. Our objectives were to:

• Showcase exclusive behind the scenes athlete training content
• Connect ourselves to our athletes and their moment in the spotlight
• Promote the latest and greatest products from Under Armour

Showcase exclusive behind the scenes athlete training content
This was some of our most effective content. We feature footage of our athletes smashing records in the gym and training for some of the worlds toughest sports. For example, our post with James "Deebo" Harrison lifting an insane amount of weight (there are about ten 45-pound plates on each side of that barbell) racked up 144.3 million Instagram views and over 75,000 comments. Over the course of the year we learned what type of athlete generated content was the most effective and posted more and more of it.

Connect ourselves to our athletes and their moments in the spotlight
In July when the Stephen Curry Asia Tour kicked off, Under Armour gave Instagram users a front row seat to the action. While Stephen Curry was serving as one of the most famous and effective ambassadors for Under Armour in Asia, we also found a way to integrate viral moments into our social feed. In what can only be described as one of the greatest moments of the tour, Stephen Curry replaced the LeBron's off of a kids feet and replaced them with a pair of Curry 3Zer0's. This video was one of the most popular videos of the sumer, garnering over one million video views.

• Some of our most effective content was planned around key moments during the year. During the 2017 NFL Season, where many of our athletes were playing weekly, we developed the UA Game Ball content series. The series showcased athletes like Tom Brady, Cam Newton and Patrick Peterson who broke records and shattered expectations. The content also provided a series that audiences could look forward to week after week.

Promote our latest and greatest products
Some of our most compelling content featured some of the latest performance gear from Under Armour. In November 2017, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson dropped his latest collection of training gear, including the highly anticipated Rock Delta's. To honor our nation's Veterans, Under Armour and The Rock asked Instagram users to share the stories of Veterans who have impacted their life. We honored those brave men and women by giving Veterans a pair of Delta's signed by The Rock.

When it was time to launch the Curry 4, we published a variety images featuring the shoe in different settings and with influencers. The colorway, Curry 4 "More Magic" sold out almost immediately.

Results

2017 was one of Under Armour's strongest years on Instagram despite Instagram's constant changes in their algorithm. Not only were we able to see a growth in our follower base, but we also saw that users were commenting and interacting with our content at a higher rate.

Some of our biggest wins for our channel included:

• Instagram followers grew from 2.9 million to 5 million (+72.4%)
• Average video views per post increased from Q1 to Q4 by 3,087%
• Average social engagements per post increased from Q1 to Q4 by 437%

Media