Rich Paul launched Klutch Athletics with New Balance two years ago to make comfortable, everyday athletic apparel not just for the practice field, the court, signing day, or the pros, but for the community of moments in between.
Going into the brand’s third year, Paul, who represents some of the biggest names in the NBA, including LeBron James, put together the first ad campaign, along with Klutch Athletics, to remind athletes and fans how all of the points in their story tie together. From football, basketball, and baseball players, to the parents who teach them their initial skills, to the emergency and medical professionals who help them along the way, to the yoga and spin instructors who keep them active later in life, there are multiple variations of athletes within each community.
“I think it’s important for people to understand that when you talk about activewear or athleisure or a sportswear brand, that doesn’t always have to be on the nail—everyone’s an athlete,” Paul said in an exclusive interview with ADWEEK. “So when you talk about this world, I think it’s a holistic approach and not just saying, ‘Hey, in order for me to really train, I have to look a certain way or play a certain sport’—that’s not true as it pertains to who we are as a brand.”
With help from creative agency Someplace, Klutch Athletics produced a 60-second ad, “The Best,” that opens with an analog recording of a voice asking, “Have you ever heard the story about the kid who grew up in the best house on the block?” The voiceover is juxtaposed with images of a kid in a Klutch hoodie shooting on a garage-mounted rim with a warped plywood backboard with cracked paint.
“Who had the best dad, with the best job,” the ad asserts, as the ad runs through different images of people in Klutch gear, adding that they also had the best coaches, teachers, and the “best of the best.”
“And then, they met us,” the voice says before the spot flips through all of the faces shown before. This isn’t narration; it’s a locker-room speech stringing together all of those moments into a story of adversity, perseverance, unity, love, and—ultimately—triumph.
“All we can do is wish them the best,” the ad concludes. As Paul watches Klutch Athletics fill what he views as a unique space within the sportswear market, he sees the campaign as a means of taking its message beyond branding, team building, or even sports to “a community that people actually believe in.”
“This is just the first of many different stories that will be told within the same universe, and what that will show is just truly how the world is connected,” Paul said. “When I grew up, buying as a consumer, buying brands that I believed in, those brands told stories to connect with. I think we’ve gone away from that, and we want to go back to that origin.”