Why This Sportswear Brand Turned Andy Murray’s Hip X-Ray Into A Billboard

Since its 2016 launch, premium sportswear brand Castore has built its name through partnerships with teams and athletes. Deals with England Cricket, Tennis star (as well its own investor) Andy Murray and the Oracle Red Bull racing crew have helped the business reach a billion that’s teetering on $1 billion.

Now the British-founded business has gone big with a six-figure marketing campaign with FCB London that pays homage to these collaborations with the mission of driving awareness and forging deeper relationships with sports fans in the process.

“Summer of Sport” launched today to highlight key moments in the U.K.’s sporting calendar, coinciding with Wimbledon, several weeks’ worth of men’s and women’s Ashes fixtures and the F1racing at Silverstone.

The campaign’s hero creative shuns product to instead present a striking image of Murray’s 2019 hip Xray, showing a metal ball in the joint. The three-time Grand Slam winner famously shared the photo with fans following a surgery in 2019 that brought him back from the brink of retirement.

The brand’s “Better Never Stops” ethos is weaved throughout the campaign, nodding to the brand’s mission to make athletes better and design clothing that gives everyone the edge. An Ashes-themed billboard will nod to Lords’ famous 22-yard pitch, while an F1 Grand Prix activation will feature driver Sergio Perez.

Smart OOH placements nationwide are set to flood areas near sports grounds, with some 14 million people expected to be exposed to the work.

Co-founder and chief executive (CEO) Thomas Beahon told Adweek that after years of working to a model rooted in partnerships Castore was ready to level up its brand strategy.

“This is us really taking it to the next level, it’s our biggest marketing campaign to date,” he said. “The brief was super simple: we wanted it to be emotive, we wanted to connect with customers in a different way.”

“Castore has a hunger to be the best, that runs all the way through the company from the people that work there to the teams they sponsor. ‘Summer of Sport’ demonstrates that relentless spirit through a tone of voice and visual style that reflects the gritty truth of sport,” Jack Walker, head of art at FCB London, said.

‘Better Never Stops’

Six years ago, the former Tranmere Rovers soccer player-turned-entrepreneur Beahon founded Castore with his brother Phil Beahon using a start-up loan from Virgin Gym. The pair said they noticed the lack of premium sportswear available in a market dominated by big players including Adidas and Nike.

Its backers include former Wimbledon champ Murray, Mohsin and Zuber Issa, the brothers that own supermarket Asda.

In 2022, Castore’s valuation hit $960 million and in the same year it found itself on The Times’ list of Britain’s fastest growing businesses, ranking in the top 10 alongside Au Vodka and Freemarket. They have firmly shelved the idea of an IPO, having watched others including Deliveroo and THG struggle to thrive after floating on the U.K. stock exchange.

The bulk of Castore’s revenue comes from the sales of its clothing, such as $200 hoodies and $50 running shorts, but its growth has been accelerated by supply deals with high-profile teams including Scottish soccer club Rangers F.C. and the England cricket team.

The ethos of “Better Never Stops” was established as the guiding brand principle three months after conception and guides everything it does today. It hired former Puma staffer Saffron Milligan as its first head of global marketing in April 2023 to help it write its next chapter.

A self-declared “digital-first” brand which was buoyed by a Covid-19 sportswear boost, Beahon said one of the challenges of launching an OOH campaign lay in how to integrate it with an approach to brand that has historically been data-led.

“We’ll be doing some guerrilla marketing around the events that the OOH is tied to and we’ll have teams on the ground collecting data, giving away products and interacting with customers,” Beahon said. “”We want to drive that physical interaction beyond the visual engagement.”

On-site QR codes will play a significant role in tying the brand’s above the line efforts with its digital efforts. The creative work tentatively went live in the week prior to Wimbledon and drove a significant “triple digit” percentage increase in website traffic driven by email sign-ups.

“We’re actively engaged in these physical events as a sports brand and it would be remiss of us not to capitalize on that,” added Beahon.

A speedboat in a sea of oil tankers

Moving forward, Beahon is adamant that athlete partnerships will still be a cornerstone in Castore’s marketing strategy.

For his team, these collaborations are about much more than slapping the logo on as many shirts as possible, rather they’re about forging the right relationships with the right athletes to amplify their voices.

“Athletes are so important. They are the living embodiment of our brand values,” he said, pointing to Murray—who launched a clothing line with the brand—as an example of this in action.

In 2021, Murray and England Rugby captain Owen Farrell, fronted a content series for the brand which focused on the day-to-day challenges faced by the stars.

“There’s no billboard or marketing budget anywhere in the world that can replicate that depth of a relationship that you can form with a consumer via telling athletes’ stories,” Beahon added.

Now, Castore is doubling down on marketing its recently launched women’s activewear range and cracking the tough U.S. market, where Nike dominates with a $78.3 billion global market share according to SportsLens.

He observed that a “cross-pollination” of U.S. investment coming into European sports such as the Premier League and U.K. sports, like cricket establishing a Stateside foothold, could help Castore gain ground here.

“It’s such a vast market, but we’re like a speedboat in a sea of oil tankers—we don’t want to fight [huge competitors] on their own turf, but there will absolutely be pockets of opportunity that we can use to bring something different and innovative to customers,” he finished.