Since being founded in 2015, Castore Sportswear have been hugely successful by creating high quality clothing, and forming partnerships with the likes of F1’s Red Bull Racing, the Premier League’s Aston Villa FC, and England Cricket.
But until now their advertising has focussed on product features, rather than building their brand.
Our brief was simple. Make Castore mean something more than a label on a piece of sports kit.
So we came up with an outdoor idea that didn’t feature any product at all.
We wanted to showcase the relentless drive that you need in elite sport, that hunger to be the best, to keep going when any sane, normal person would give up.
And what better example of that uncompromising spirit than Andy Murray?
An athlete the world thought was going to retire in 2019 when he broke down in tears after losing at the Australian Open, because the pain in his hip was too much to deal with.
But since his surgery later that year, he’s gone on to win multiple tournaments, confounding the experts.
We could have used traditional sports photography of Andy Murray wearing Castore, looking heroic and gritty.
But we wanted to use outdoor in an unexpected way.
No clothing.
No photoshoots.
No dripping sweat.
Instead, we asked Andy if we could use the X-Ray of his hip resurfacing operation.
That became our billboard. Complete with medical annotations.
Why?
Because an X-ray literally shows what’s inside Andy Murray.
It shows us that his frailty makes him stronger.
And shows the world what Castore stands for.
‘Better Never Stops.’
Results exceeded all expectations:
· Outdoor campaign drove 175K more visits to the Castore website
· PR coverage of the billboard included The Sun, Daily Star, Yahoo News, Campaign and Adweek
· Sir Andy Murray gave it his blessing, sharing the ad on his personal Instagram
· Digital campaign beat all viewthrough and click through rate benchmarks
· Video completion rate up 267% on Tik Tok
· Engagement rate up 299% on Instagram
Story completion up 149% on Instagram
