Joining the movements that matter through marketing

Society is constantly changing through different movements. And something that's powerful enough to change the world has got to be incredibly useful for a brand to be associated with it, right? It will give you access to a dedicated community of like-minded people, who are passionate about the movements and highly likely to engage with brands that are connected to them.

But you can't just stand up and declare "we're a part of x-movements now" as a CMO. It takes a lot of work to find the right movements, and then connect your brand to them in a way that feels organic and authentic.

That's a challenge Elliott Rayner, CMO of sports-tech brand ARION, is currently tackling, and he joined a recent episode of CMO Convo to share his insights and advice on leveraging societal movements. We covered everything from why movement marketing can be so effective, to different examples and approaches so you can develop your own strategies.

Prefer to listen? Check out Elliot's appearance on the CMO Convo podcast 👇

Elliott's background and role at ARION

Hi, Elliott, welcome to CMO Convo. How are you doing today?

Yeah, I’m really well. Thanks for having me today. We've been planning to do this for a while. I'm glad we could sit down and talk.

Us too! Today we're talking about movement marketing from your B2C perspective, but it can apply to B2B as well. But before we do get down to that discussion, maybe introduce yourself to our audience, tell us a bit about your background and maybe give a bit of an overview of what we're talking about today?

Yeah, sure. My name is Elliott Rayner, and I'm from Newcastle in the North of England. I spent most of my career completely in marketing, but in two very distinct different industries. I spent the first leg of my career in sports. I worked for Adidas for seven or eight years, and then in Asics for three to four years.

I was working on creating sports products, and sports marketing, and then in my second leg I moved more into tech. I was a Head of Product Marketing for Babbel, the language app, and worked as a digital consultant as well.

Now I've got the opportunity to combine both of those worlds and work in sports tech, which is something I'm really interested in, and I’m able to combine everything I've learned. Right now I'm working for ARION. ARION is a really interesting, deep tech brand that uses innovations to help people understand more about the way they move.

It’s about helping people understand their technique, helping them to run a little bit faster, a little bit further and a lot safer. So a lot of our technology is utilized to help people reduce their running injuries, which is a nice purpose-driven vision. I think this is what led us into the conversation we wanted to have today, which is movement marketing. I think it's something that is more commonly becoming more associated with their marketing strategy. I think that's one thing we wanted to talk about.

What is movement marketing and why is it important?

Let's just clarify, because it's not just a clever pun on the athletics industry, movement marketing is an actual concept. What do we mean by movement marketing?

Yeah, there are a few different descriptions for it. It's quite a new thing. It's usually when a brand tries to latch on to something more than just themselves or their customer. So, it’s something within society that's changing, usually like a social trend.

One of the good descriptions I've seen is that movement marketing is the intersection between brand identity and a social trend. So, it really takes a lot of time to understand what your brand is and who you want to be., and what kind of movements exist where you can really connect. In doing so, you really want to become a part of that movement and make a difference.

There are some really great examples of companies that do it well. And there are some really terrible examples of brands doing it badly. And I think the reason for that is that movement marketing is not one of those things that every brand should do. It's not a new strategy that every branch should be going towards, like a fashionable thing. Even if they do it, there are some rules to follow to make sure you're doing it right. It can be disastrous when in the wrong hands.

We're very much looking forward to the examples, particularly the negative ones, because it's always more fun talking about disasters!

We learn more through failure, but there are some positive examples we can learn from as well!

Definitely! Let's stay positive for now, what are the benefits of becoming a part of these types of movements?

Well, I think it's funny because when it works wrong, I think it’s quite transparent to the audience that you are latching on to. They know you're not being authentic. But when you are doing it right, the benefits are huge!

I think the real benefit is that your audience starts marketing on your behalf. They're so convinced of your brand that you no longer need to depend on yourself, your marketing budget and your team to talk about how great your brand is and what your brand does.

Because if you're part of a movement, then the movement actually does that as well. I think that one of the key attributes of a brand that's done movement marketing well is that the audience speaks about it.

Our first example should maybe be Tesla. Living in the Netherlands, it feels like every third person has a Tesla here. It's a really good market for it. If you ever have a coffee or a beer with anyone who has a Tesla, they really talk about it not as a product or an asset, but as being part of a community.

They talk about it with a lot of passion. And they feel like they're a part of something. They're a part of the movement. Tesla is one of those brands that famously doesn't really have a traditional marketing budget. They don't spend a lot of money on marketing. I think the reason for that is that they have managed to get their audience to do that for them.

I strongly believe that the majority of people are converting to a product because other people are, it’s happening through word of mouth. People are saying, “You've got to try this.” This is really a marketer's dream. When you don't have to do anything, you're just relying on word of mouth. You've got millions of more customers who are being your marketers for you. I think that's the true benefit of movement marketing.

And ideally, with these movements, you're connecting the brands to something beneficial to society. Having your brand associated with that beneficial movement has got to be something that's really powerful.

It's got to be something that if your brand is top of mind when it comes to a positive movement in society, then that's gonna be something that's really powerful.

Yeah, I think inspiring emotion is one of the things that is a common thread between these movements. What’s positive or negative can always be seen in different ways, but the ability to invoke some kind of inspiration and emotion is always going to be powerful.

Think of something like a paperclip company. No matter how much they want to be involved in movement marketing, it's probably very difficult to do that when you've got a product or a brand that traditionally is more of a functional need, rather than something that people really identify with. And when you've got a brand like that, you're much more likely to be connected with a similar very positive and inspirational movement.

And it's always gonna be super beneficial in terms of user-generated content if you have a powerful hashtag associated with it, and everyone's using that hashtag and creating content. That's got to be hugely beneficial to marketers and customers as well. It's connecting them with each other. You're building a community around this kind of movement, right?

Yeah, that was one of my favorite points. This is how brands are able to visually display their commitment. Think about Starbucks, for example, one of the social trends they might have touched on is the ability to use their retail spaces to invite people in for an experience.

This was part of a movement of fewer people working in the offices and there being more freelancers. It was a cultural movement. One way of displaying that was through the cup. Another one was the LIVESTRONG bracelets. They were famous for a while, but my favorite is the Harley-Davidson jacket.

Whenever someone buys a Harley-Davidson product, they're buying something more than the product. When you look at their brand identity, they're always associated with the idea of freedom.

You're jumping on your Harley-Davidson, you're riding off into the sunset, that's what you're buying into. They have that leather jacket, which can show you people are proud. I'm part of this biker community. That's my identity.

Not only can they be a part of the movement, but you're giving your audience a way to show off that they're a part of it. Once again, Tesla is another good example. If you can have something like that, even more than a hashtag, but a digital or a physical product or tag, then I think that's a really wise thing to have in movement marketing. The brands that do it best usually have the ability to do that.

With the Harley-Davidson example you can really see all that. If you go to a biker bar, and you see two people with Harley-Davidsons, they will start talking to each other about them.

They'll start talking very loudly about how much they love their Harley-Davidsons. In a way, they’re almost creating FOMO for not being in this community without even realizing it.

If you look in one pub, you could have three Tesla owners, three Harley-Davidson owners, and then maybe three people who are obsessed with bitcoin and cryptocurrency, which is also a kind of movement.

The thing they all have in common is that they will speak very loudly about it. And it is because they bring it into their identity. They think they’re really a part of this.

I think that's exactly what these brands are. They're more than just the brand and the product. They’re representing inspiration, or they represent an emotion. They're just a part of that community.

I think that's another really important part of what we talk about when we talk about movement marketing. An essential part of it is community, which is so important for every marketer now. How do you build this community?

I think that's a fundamental part of movement marketing. There aren't many brands who have been successful in movement marketing who haven't utilized community as a key foundational piece of achieving that success.

Successful marketing movement examples

Let's talk about some of the ones that have been really successful. We touched on a couple of examples, but are there a few that you really want to highlight as examples that we should be looking towards?

Yeah, I think that there's a lot out there, and I'm always looking for new ones. I think they are rare. I think they should be rare because not everyone can do it. Also, the social trends don't just grow on trees, you have to wait for the right time. It's not just having the right strategy, but also the right time.

That’s the fundamental one I go back to over and over. I don't think I've done a marketing presentation without this brand in. The brand is Patagonia. Coming from the fashion or the sports industry, I think Patagonia has always been seen as a brand that goes the extra mile with their messaging and their vision.

I think one thing we'll talk about a little bit is sustainability. This is a very important social trend that has millions of failed movement marketing attempts. I think with every brand, you'll struggle to find one that doesn't have some part in their website which says they're so good at sustainability.

I think that's what makes a difference in Patagonia. They don't just say what they do, they back it up with actions as well. A great example of Patagonia’s campaign is that they tell you they don't want you to buy more than one of their winter jackets. If you buy it and it ends up getting damaged, they’ll repair it.

They don't want you to have more than one, which is an incredible thing for a company that depends on sales. It's very ambitious. But it's putting their money where their mouth is. Their brand is sustainability first. And I think that's why they're such a powerful brand.

This is an industry where being a powerful brand makes a difference. With Adidas, for example, so much of their budget goes on reinforcing the brand. It's the difference between a sale and not a sale. Patagonia does it with a much lower budget, but they’re just so concise, and so meaningful, and so inspirational, and they’re actually backing up what they say.

I think they're a really great brand for doing this. However, there's another brand that has emerged extremely successfully over the last few years, specifically during the pandemic. This is Oatly. They make oat milk.

Once again, you wouldn't naturally think of this kind of brand as being able to evoke emotion and inspire, but they've managed to time the connection with the social trend perfectly, this rise in healthy eating.

There’s a real social push for a plant-based diet and being conscious of animal welfare, which is growing really well, especially in the last three years. But again, it’s about doing it in a very meaningful way, backing it up, being very clear in the marketing.

I think there are a few brands that are doing a better job right now with their marketing and you can see how fast they're growing. If you go to a supermarket now, you'll probably find 50 oat milk brands that weren't there before, and yet it seems they're able to keep such a dominant part of that market, which is not easy to do when basically all you're selling is oat milk.

It depends completely on the brand. I think they're doing a very good job of highlighting how movement marketing can really build a brand from nothing and pretty much be the foundation of their whole success.

Definitely. There's two examples that you gave as well where that's worked. They've sort of become top of mind when it comes to their verticals as well. When many people think about hiking jackets, they'll instantly think of Patagonia. When they think of oat milk, Oatly is the first thing that comes to mind.

It shows the strength of brand recognition that can come from being at the forefront of these movements as well. Patagonia, in particular, is a great example. They're not only speaking to the sustainability movement, but they're also speaking to their customers, customers who buy Patagonia stuff.

They want it to last a lifetime. They want something they can feel they can trust in for a lifetime. If they're saying we only want you to buy one thing, you've got to trust that something's gonna last for your entire life.

There’s a really strange irony to it, because obviously they’re fighting against consumption, which they identify as one of the key parts of sustainability. Most brands don't want to do this, they want to talk about recycled materials.

But the fact is, if you really want to tackle that, you have to decrease consumption. Most brands don't want to be authentic or transparent about that, because that usually means less sales. So Patagonia is actually going one step further to do that.

But the irony is those campaigns are leading to double-figure growth, because of what you're saying. It's going to lead to higher sales anyway, so it's a strange one. But it just shows you how powerful good branding through movement marketing can be. They're not just talking about themselves, they're talking about the social movement, and being a key leader in that. And I think that's the key to great movement marketing.

Movement marketing disasters to avoid

Definitely. So, let's flip the coin. Let's talk about what everyone's waiting for, the disasters when it comes to movement marketing. Who's attempted this and absolutely failed?

I think there are a lot of failures, most of them probably aren't as famous because they just dissolve. You won’t hear about a bad movement marketing campaign. When marketing's not successful, you don't hear of it. But there's a key one that's good to talk about. Everyone knows about Pepsi's big campaign with Kendall Jenner.

During this time, there was a lot of political unrest and a lot of protesting on the streets. So as we’ve established, movement marketing is the intersection of brand identity and social trends. They looked at the social trend as something that was going on, and they probably thought it was a great opportunity for a brand to be a part of.

They probably looked at their own brand identity, and their consumer personas as young people on the streets. This is our key market, they thought. But it was a disaster. They pulled the campaign, but they’d invested a huge amount of money in it. There had to be a lot of apologies.

That was an example of what not to do for many different reasons, not just for movement marketing. I think it's quite easy to see why it was a failure. A lot of these social trends are very sensitive as well. They're not to be played around with for corporate benefit.

Even if you do, it's quite easy for someone to see when you're being disingenuous. I think that's the biggest task we have as marketers now. The majority of people are quite cynical. And for obvious reasons. I used to work for sports brands, and every year I'd be saying that a running shoe was gonna change your life. It's better, it's faster, it's stronger.

And then six months later, I'll be saying the same thing. How many times as a consumer can you hear that this is the best thing ever before you start to get a little cynical. And then you're bombarded with a million different marketing messages a day. Eventually you're going to become more cynical with how you look at brands and products.

And so you need to be able to prove yourself not just through words but through actions as well. I think most people realized, what does Pepsi have to do with the political unrest and protesting and social freedoms? This ultimately led to them being seen as the ultimate ‘what not to do’ when it comes to movement marketing.

One of the issues with the Pepsi example was that they were evoking political imagery without actually saying anything political. They were trying to have their cake and eat it too. A great contrast to that is the Coca-Cola ‘Share a Coke’ campaign from a few years ago.

It's still running in quite a few parts of the world, which shows the longevity of this. And that was fully apolitical. And it was all just about sharing a coke with one another and taking a picture of you sharing that coke with your name on it and stuff like that. It increased sales massively.

It might not count as a societal movement necessarily, but it was still encouraging their consumers to get out and buy the Coke and do something with it, which has the quality of a movement about it. It’s a call to action.

It’s got that increasing connectedness and community spirit that you associate with a movement. One of my former bosses was obsessed with Coca Cola as a brand and would use them as an example all the time. It's amazing that a brand like Coca Cola has been around for so long in so many markets over so many decades.

And actually, the core to their brand has always been the same, it’s about sharing happiness and sharing moments. You can look at their brand campaigns from the 1950s onwards where it's still apparent. I think that's why that works, because we're able to see the consistency and the authenticity of that compared to the Pepsi example or other brand examples where you can sense a lack of authenticity.

There was a great video that went around last year at the very first lockdown during the pandemic, where every brand saw the opportunity to reassure their audiences. Somebody put together a compilation of 30 brands together, and they're all using the same language, and the same piano music.

A lot of them just felt so empty. I think Tesla is a good example of one of these brands that are saying they’re going to be here for you, but Tesla is a brand that you don’t see as loving and protective. You see them as engineering and innovation. It feels quite strange. I always use the example of a family member who you've never had a good relationship with suddenly telling you how much they love you.

This is a bit strange. You haven't earned that relationship, right? That's what brands have to be careful of. Just because the opportunity is there, it doesn’t mean you’ve earned the right to do that. It's a very dangerous thing to just follow the market.

Does your brand actually have the authenticity and transparency to be able to send that message? Some do and some don't. I think someone like UNICEF could use the exact same commercial language, music, and copy as a Tesla one, and it would work brilliantly. There's nothing wrong with the copy and the marketing strategy and the content. The problem is that the brand hasn't earned the right to say that.

It all comes down to walking the walk at the end of the day, doesn't it? If there’s no action to back up the message, then it's an empty promise.

I like what you said about the Pepsi example. There was no risk other than the risk that it failed, which is stupid. Whereas with the Patagonia example, there's a lot of risk. You're telling your customers not to buy your product. That's huge.

And I'm sure there were a lot of people in the room saying it was crazy. But that's the difference. And customers recognize that. It's about having principles, I guess.

There's a lot to say about how brands are very similar to people. They have to earn respect before people will trust them to recognize that. People are getting better and better at seeing when brands are genuine or not.

At the same time, marketers have to get better and better at making sure their brand is very clear and concise and have a really good understanding of who they are and who they want to be.

Building a movement at ARION

Definitely. So, with all that in mind, we've talked about the positives, the negatives, the risks, the benefits, but how are you approaching this at ARION? Are you creating a movement? Are you joining movements already happening? What kind of approach are you taking?

For us, it was very different. It was more of an ‘aha!’ moment. We started with our own brand and asked, what is our value? What do people like about our products? So, for example, one of the things we’ve done with our product is that you can go into any sports retail space.

You choose three shoes, put our technology inside the shoe, and it'll tell you exactly how you'd run in all three. You can see that there’s better cadence for the Nike shoe and better in-flight time for Adidas shoes, for example. It gives you your complete digital footstrike. It always gets to this point where someone has that ‘aha’ moment of, “Oh my God, that's me! Now I understand what I'm doing wrong!”

I always compare it to hearing your own voice. You always have that weird moment where you can’t believe that’s what you sound like. That's what people get when they put our product in the right shoe. It's a moment of self-discovery. I think people really like what they’re learning about themselves.

That was a really interesting thing for us. We realized that there’s something in this that's bigger than the product. I think the best products don't talk about what they do, they talk about the value that they bring. And the value that we bring is helping people to understand more about themselves.

In doing so we help them to change their running technique to buy better running shoes. And so we just started leaning into that a little bit more, and came up with this concept of running identity, that every runner is incredibly unique.

Before you buy a new pair of shoes, or you sign up for a marathon, it's a good idea to learn a bit more about yourself before you do that. That's been our adventure of moving into that social trend. We’re definitely not creating anything, it's a movement that many brands are involved in.

I think another good example that we can bring into that is Peloton. You saw Peloton really explode as a brand. It's more than one movement. It's self-improvement and health and fitness.

But once again, Peloton is famous for building communities. You can't go to a cycling club, but you can join dozens of people around the world at the same time, digitally, on your bike. There are a lot of fitness brands leaning into it.

I think we're just finding our voice, and being very careful to be authentic and transparent about that. You need to do that in order to be successful.

The timing of this is probably a really good time to capitalize on this. Many people got into running during the lockdown. Gyms were closed, not everyone can afford fancy at-home exercise equipment, like Peloton.

Having these kinds of movements is a way of carrying that motivation forward, evolving it. Lots of people started running because it was the only way they could exercise. And now they're moving into the stage of actually really enjoying running.

They might say they want to take it further. They’re gonna sign up for a half marathon, they’re gonna sign up for a full marathon maybe. Having this kind of community, this kind of network that you can connect with, could be a very, very powerful thing to help keep that motivation going. Is that something you had in mind when you were bringing this in?

Absolutely, you've hit on a few things there. I think that was one of the tough things about the pandemic, a lot of people have moved to eCommerce, because they can't shop during the pandemic and lockdown. And usually, it's a good place to go.

A lot of these guys are very well trained in letting you know what shoes to wear. By wearing the wrong shoes, you can completely damage your knees and increase injury. It's a very important thing. The more that we can highlight that, the more we can help people find the right shoes and adapt their technique.

That's a really important thing. Another big social trend now is personalization. People really like to feel unique and explore and understand more about themselves. And there are many different apps and brands out there who are really attributing their brand to that. And I think ours is the same. In the past a lot of sports brands wanted you to be a category. You're a marathon runner, or you're a heel strike, or you're a trail runner.

Really, it's not easy to do that. What our metrics show is that we've now got 50 million footsteps recorded. Every single person is incredibly unique, from their body types, to their techniques, to their ambitions.

It pays off to understand a little bit more about yourself before you do that. This idea of personalization is really important as well. One of the things we were trying to highlight was the benefits of having an identity tag.

After one minute of running, you're able to see your digital footstrike. You actually see exactly how your foot lands within the shoe. And that's very enlightening. It's a really good key to understanding whether you've got good running technique or not. And so one of our first things was, well, let's make this thing shareable.

Let's make this something that people can keep. The next time they go to buy shoes, they can show the clerk their footstrike and get a pair of shoes that will be good for this running technique. It can put that power in their hands.

It’s the same way where if you've ever been fitted for snowboard boots or fitted for a really great suit, they have to have your measurements. You should always keep that information because it's very unique to you. It's going to empower you to be able to make better product choices in the future.

That's what we want to be for running shoes. We want to be that thing you keep that is completely unique for you as your little badge of honor. It's your running identity. And so we're still exploring how to push that further. We would love to build a community where people are sharing with each other and saying, “Wow, this is mine. This is how I adapted my technique.” But it takes a lot more effort to cultivate that. And that's something we're exploring.

That shareability is hugely powerful. We're thinking of wearable technology like Fitbit and stuff like that. When they first launched, people were a little resistant to them, except in very niche groups.

But when you started being able to share your stats online on social media, that's when it really started to explode as not just a popular piece of equipment, but a popular thing just to have. It's become like a fashion accessory. And it's that shareability that was a real kickstart to that.

Yeah, and it's something that we're trying to explore as well. I think the problem with that shareability when it comes to performance is how many times can you share how great you did a 10k? How interested are other people?

So, for example, if you were to read a post from someone showing you their fastest 10k time you might find that interesting. But if you saw a post from someone saying they’d had knee injuries their whole life but now they don’t have anything, you're definitely going to be interested in that post.

It's a very human thing. It's not showing off, it's very meaningful. And I think there's a lot more room to play around in that when it comes to content and sharing and community when it's about reducing injuries rather than improving performance.

But I think this idea of human movement and reducing injuries is a much better playground for us to be in rather than people sharing five seconds of a marathon time. This is still great, but it's a lot more of a niche message compared to people overcoming injuries. That gives us a much bigger scope for our messaging.

So, being in any industry, it's all about measuring improvements, measuring success, measuring what's going wrong, and what you need to find to improve things. How are you measuring the success of movement marketing? What are the KPIs?

Yeah, so anytime someone uses one of our products, it's documented. Every time someone goes for a run, they're more engaged. They believe in the product and the brand and the vision of running identity. That's a good sign. The second stage is ARIONHub.

So, as I said, if you walk into a store, and you want to use the ARIONHub and find out what shoe is best for you, that's obviously a really important issue. The third stage is us not having to encourage people to share their running identity anymore.

We're not in charge of the conversation when someone finds a forum buried away somewhere, and there are five people sharing their running identities and talking about how interesting it is.

I think this is the ultimate sign of it working. A lot of the great brands like Garmin, they're not actually controlling or monitoring those conversations. they just pop up and start cultivating their own communities.

I think that's a really interesting thing. But more often than not, we're all about recording steps. The more steps we record, the more intelligent our algorithms get. As I said, my dream is to record billions of individual unique foot strikes from people all over the world. And by doing that, we're going to be able to understand more about human movement. And that's what's really important for us to achieve our vision.

And those self-perpetuating conversations can be an absolute goldmine. There are so many insights you can find. There are just little nuggets of genius that you can use for messaging and positioning and stuff like that. They’ve got to be extremely valuable.

Also, for guiding the product roadmap, going back to Tesla, I think they choose a lot of their next upgrades based on those conversations and forums of listening to people who're seen not getting what they want. It's great as a marketer to be able to stop predicting and trying to guess what your audience wants and just listen to them.

But you have to be able to build that environment and community to be able to do that. The other way is to build focus groups where you're paying random people to come in. Imagine the power of having somewhere where you can access and go in and experiment with products and beta test them. What an asset that could be to a brand, to get everything right before you go live with a bigger product or a new feature.

That will help your customers feel more connected to that brand, which increases their longevity. If they feel like they've been having an influence over how products are evolving and stuff like that, then they're going to stick around. They want to stay connected to the brand because they feel like they're having an influence. Is that something you've kept in mind when it comes to this?

Yeah, we're not far away from that. Do you build these communities? Or do they build themselves? Can you actually do it yourself? Can we sit there and build a Reddit channel and a Slack channel and maybe invite some of them in with the prospect of a few free discounts and things? Or is that the wrong way?

Do you just have to, like Patagonia, take the step into that world, and let it hopefully emerge organically. But you're absolutely right. What you're hoping will happen is that we’ll end up with evangelists, and I think that's what we're talking about.

That's what you want all of your consumers to be. They're not just purchasing, they don't just like the product, they're an evangelist. They love it, it's part of their identity. The guy wearing the Harley Davidson jacket is a Harley Davidson evangelist. And one of the benefits of that is he's going to help you grow your sales.

He's going to convince other people to be part of it. But as you've pointed out, the benefit of the brand is that you've got this great connection to him. You can ask him about how you can make the experience better.

That's something that I think every brand aspires to, but it's just really not easy. And actually, the question remains, is it something you can do yourself? How many of these brands actually thought of that and built up to it, or how many of them just believed in their own brand, and a community emerged around them which they just took advantage of.

Grassroots movements can take a while to grow. It can stay a bit underground for a while, but then when it does come up, it can be great to jump on it quickly. But too quickly and it can look a little bit fake. And people can tell it's fake straight away. Whereas if it's real, people can tell straight away.

It's funny because I think the two words that we’re coming back to again and again are authenticity and transparency. We've talked a lot about authenticity, but not so much about transparency.

I think what you're hitting on really well is that we’re all cynical. It's not enough to say it, you have to show it. I think that's the key to a lot of these things. That's why you should never get involved if you can't show it. Because you will be found out.

I think coming back to sustainability, that's where a lot of the problem lies. Now every brand is saying they’re the most sustainable brand, but can they actually back it up and show their transparency?

I think that's a big thing to decide and to think about before you start, can we back this up? And can we show our transparency? Because ultimately, that's going to be the difference between being exposed or not. You definitely don’t want to be seen as disingenuous.

Can you give us a golden rule for CMOs who are trying to set this up, who are trying to get into the movement marketing approach? Is there anything else that you'd like to share in terms of advice that you've learned from your own experiences and the examples you've looked at?

Yeah, I think we've hit on two things on both ends. We talked about it being the intersection between brand identity and social trends. I think on the social trend side, what we said is, you have to be authentic, so don't go into it if it's not something that's inspirational, or it doesn't evoke emotion.

You need to do your research there. But first, I think on the other side it’s really important to understand what your brand is and who they are. I think that's actually something that’s underappreciated. A lot of brands don't do a lot of work into that.

I think spending a lot of time understanding your own brand and your own brand identity is a really important first rule. I think something like narrative design, which I find is a really useful tool, and actually mapping out your brand of who you want to be and how you're perceived is a really important first rule.

The other thing I would say is to not force it. If the movement isn’t there, don't do it. Not every branch should do it. If you can't do it, it's okay not to do it. I think it’s about experimenting as well, finding your own voice and seeing what works, but not forcing it if it's not there.

Finally, the other thing is thinking long term, which is one thing we haven't talked about. Some social trends last one month. If you think it's a fad or a fashion, maybe just wait and see. Your brand is something that has to stand the test of time and be around for a long time.

One example you can give is Pokemon Go. It was the biggest thing in the world for one month. People went crazy for it.

It seemed like they were really going into a social trend there, combining the digital and physical worlds and getting out there. There are so many articles written at the time saying this is going to be the next thing.

And then as quick as it arrived, it went. You want your brand to be around for a very long time. It’s an important thing to research before you jump in.

It kind of ties in to what we discussed about there being the right time and place for movements. Sometimes a movement just isn't ready. Like the example with Pokemon Go. The technology was there. The idea was there, but maybe society isn't there yet. Maybe there will be a movement for that in the future. But we'll have to wait and see.

Thank you very much, Elliot. We're excited to see how the ARION Footstrike movement evolves, and we're sure our readers are to. Is there anywhere in particular that people can take a look at this kind of movement that you're trying to get going with ARION?

Across Arion.com and all of our social pages, you can catch up on all of the things we're doing and hopefully get some big announcements and collaborations coming up.

Ultimately, what we hope is that the next time you're buying running shoes, you'll walk into a running store, and you'll see our product there and take 10 minutes to understand a little bit more about yourself. If you do that, it pays off in the long run.

And so we're really looking forward to being part of that trend of self-discovery and the importance of listening to your body and the benefits that come with that. But yeah, you can follow most of what we do on our website.

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