New Balance · Athletic footwear and apparel · Casting, post-production & influencer marketing · 2026
How New Balance cast seven athletes to sell local stores
Store-level retail marketing rarely gets real production value. This campaign treated it like a brand shoot.
750k
cumulative audience
across the cast athletes
The results, up top — every number is in the strip below
7
athletes cast
selected for community standing
750k
cumulative audience
across the cast
3
final films
showcasing local California stores
100
unique photo & video assets
from a single production
Local
store-level focus
not national brand advertising
01 — The challenge
Driving footfall to specific California stores, not the brand at large.
New Balance needed promotional video tied to particular California locations — a narrower job than brand advertising, and one where generic athlete imagery does nothing.
The people in the films had to have genuine standing in those local communities.
“A national athlete does not make someone walk into a store in their neighbourhood. Someone their run club follows does.”
So casting was the campaign, and the production followed the cast.
02 — Our approach
Community-credible casting, then production and post around it.
Seven athletes were discovered and cast for genuine community influence rather than follower count alone, together reaching a cumulative audience around 750,000.
Production delivered three final films showcasing local California stores, plus around 100 unique photo and video assets for ongoing use — so a single shoot fed the campaign and the content calendar behind it.
03 — What we did
What the campaign actually consisted of.
The working parts behind the New Balance numbers above.
Athlete discovery and casting
Standing over follower count
Seven athletes were selected for real community influence in the target areas.
Creator asset grid
Three store films
Local, not national
Final videos showcased specific California stores rather than the brand in the abstract.
Creative from the campaign
100 unique assets
One shoot, months of content
Around 100 photo and video assets came out of the same production.
Reported asset counts
750k cumulative audience
Reach with local credibility
The cast’s combined audience reached roughly 750,000 people.
Reported audience summary
The stack we ran it on
Meta Ads Manager
Paid social
TikTok Ads Manager
Paid social
Creator sourcing
Casting
Spark Ads & whitelisting
Amplification
Frame.io
Creative review
Canva
Creative
GA4
Analytics
Looker Studio
Dashboards
“Web Tonic did in six weeks what our last two agencies couldn't in a year — and for the first time we could see every dollar of it”
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