How One Ad Agency Is Taking Workout Gear to the Extreme

Every ad agency worth its salt has some sort of entreprenurial division, and Mother New York is no exception. Some recent ventures have included BuzzFeed-approved one-touch pizza delivery technology and an in-house e-commerce site that sells knick-knacks ranging from a "booty-shaking app" to a series of custom tweets composed by director of business development Chris Roan and written on proper stationary. The independent shop's latest project, however, caters to a very specific demographic: extreme athletes. Snapbac is a line of heat-and-compression-powered athletic wear focusing on those crucial periods before and after an intense workout in order to facilitate a more efficient recovery. More than a decade of research led to its debut ad, "It's Gain Day," which went live last month. Snapbac co-founder and chief operating officer Kevin Bello says the project's origins stretch all the way back to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, when his partner, professional equestrian and fellow co-founder Ali Nilforushan, noticed the impracticality of hiring vets to stand still and hold ice packs on the haunches of exhausted horses who'd just competed. "That was his entreprenerial insanity moment," Bello tells Adweek. "We should develop a system by which to position the ice packs, not have to pay someone $10,000 to do it." Bello later left his job in the medical devices industry to help develop a product that would do just that. And through his existing relationships with the NFL and NBA, he recognized an untapped market for human athletes dealing with similar aches and pains. Rather than simply "attaching" ice packs to players' bodies with plastic wrap, the team developed a prototype in 2008 that amounted to "a shirt that lets people wear their heat therapy." Bello and his partners worked with the former head of apparel research for Adidas, compression specialist Chris Bohannon and Dr. Andy Walshe, head of high performance for Red Bull Studios, to help develop a line of such garments. "The goal is to be a solution for athletes," Bello says. "If they recover better, they perform better." Snapbac is unique in two ways: Its tops and bottoms are designed to compress the muscle systems and prevent significant injury during periods of extreme physical exertion. And they also include zipper "pouches" that allow the insertion of packs that can be alternately heated or frozen to provide relief both before and after a big workout. So, what got Mother New York interested in compression and heat therapy? Agency CEO Peter Ravailhe calls its 20-year-old investment portfolio "a hidden secret that attracted me to [the agency]," describing Snapbac as "a continuation of that spirit." A former colleague introduced Brello to Ravailhe, and the agency subsequently acquired an equity share in Snapbac, with the goal of reaching what Bello calls "fitness as religion folks." This is not a negligible group of consumers: According to Bello, such high-intensity workout businesses as Tough Mudder have seen 500 percent growth in recent years, thanks to hobbyists who don't have professional trainers to help them recover. "It felt right because there's [both] a product we all believe in and a creative, strategic opportunity to, we think, add tremendous value," Ravaile says. "The brand needed some help [with] development and strategic rigor. It's a nice way to flex another side of the brain muscle." Mother and Snapbac have been doing quite a bit of work to promote the line. The agency assisted in the product design process, handles all of Snapbac's marketing efforts, and helped launch a pop-up store in downtown Manhattan this month to educate consumers about the Precovery product line. Certain famous names made an appearance in SoHo to voice their support. The one and only Captain, Derek Jeter, stopped by our Precovery Lab to learn more about the future of recovery and performance! The word is getting out there, make sure you stop by our pop up space @ 188 Lafayette St. before Nov 20th! Stay tuned for more exciting things to come #Snapbac #ItsGainDay #Precovery #DerekJeter A photo posted by Snapbac (@snapbac) on Nov 10, 2016 at 9:14am PST Moving forward, the partners hope to raise awareness of the brand via influencer endorsements and an extended marketing campaign set to run throughout 2017; the New York effort effectively served as a soft launch. How does Snapbac differentiate itself in the very crowded athleticwear market? "Our visual world is very much about sitting down; we want you to rest harder," Bello says. "If Nike says 'Just Do It,' we say just don't do it." This might prove to be a compelling message for millions who push themselves beyond their own physical limits in the interest of fitness.

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How One Ad Agency Is Taking Workout Gear to the Extreme

Mother New York and Snapbac focus on recovery

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