Audience Intelligence and Media Planning Insights | TelmarHelixa

A Sneaker Brand Levels Up to Find the Perfect Partner

Written by TelmarHelixa | March 5, 2025

The Situation

These Sneakers Needed a Kick-start

A sneaker and lifestyle brand wanted to roll out a new athleisure product line targeting Gen Z and young Millennial gamers. For the teaser campaign, they were looking for a partnership opportunity with creators who reach a wide audience and have a strong gamer following.

The Challenge

Finding the Elusive Z Factor

Brand leaders wanted to reach a gaming audience without compromising their campaign reach. Gaming influencers have devout followings but can be too niche, so they had to find and align wide-reaching creators to the gaming category. They also needed to better understand these audiences before approaching their talent agencies.

 

The Solution

Unexpected Influencer Affinities

Key marketing leaders for the lifestyle company used TelmarHelixa’s Discover to better understand the relationship between those interested in the sneaker brand itself and Fortnite — one of the leading online multiplayer gaming obsessions on the market.

Using Fortnite as the inflection point, they quickly found that one of the largest comedic creators on YouTube resonated with both Fortnite and the sneaker brand.

Fans of the sneaker brand and Fortnite had an affinity for the YouTube star at a rate four times greater than the average American. This insight was a significant win for the sneaker brand, providing a high-impact partnership opportunity that aligned with their audience—without the premium cost of an A-list collaboration like Travis Scott.

Source: TelmarHelixa Discover’s Interest and Affinity Graph
Affinity: Helixa proprietary statistical calculation that measures the level engagement of the target audience as it relates to a given base population. Affinity score is based on a 1.00x index scale, which represents the average consumer as it relates to the base population.

 

To further emphasize the opportunity to reach gamers and those interested in apparel, they used Discover’s proprietary psychographic lifestyles to show that the creators' audience was over-indexed as “Gamers” and “Fashion Lovers.”