Social media streaming raises the bar for Gymshark’s homecoming pop-up store

Ahead of the launch of Gymshark’s 2018 summer pop-up store in Birmingham, UK, the sportswear brand harnessed the power of live video streaming to social media with Grabyo, helping drive event attendance to a new record of just under 10,000 people.

Gymshark delivered six live social video shows using Grabyo’s Producer product, with each Facebook Live broadcast lasting 25 minutes and generating more than 50,000 views and over 4,000 direct engagements.

Returning to Birmingham where the company was founded, Gymshark was determined to make sure its homecoming pop-up store was its biggest yet. In order to do this, it was vital to ensure UK fans were engaged with the brand more than ever before and that its message reached as wide an audience as possible.

The Gymshark team set about delivering a series of live video broadcasts, curated to keep fans watching and inspire them to get involved with the brand. During the streams, Gymshark called upon its athletes, adored by fans, to undertake entertaining challenges and live Q&As with viewers.

For each broadcast, Gymshark utilised Grabyo’s cloud-based Producer platform to stream directly to Facebook Live. Partnering with Grabyo enhanced the production with branded graphics, animations and real-time overlays of fan comments on-screen, generating a significant uplift in watch times and engagement.

The response from fans was overwhelming. Ronald Kafesu, Gymshark said: “The success of our Facebook Live events has been incredible. We feel the production process has improved each time as we are able to incorporate new features such as graphics overlays, animations and more innovative ways to get fans involved. Engagement is important to us; we value comments more as it takes a lot for someone to take the time to respond directly to our content and we were very excited by the volume that did.”

Community participation and interactive feedback for live video on social media is the most engaging form of content brands can deliver. By offering polls to vote on and inviting questions from fans, which can be displayed on-screen, brands are able to offer a level of participation that creates a meaningful and memorable experience for viewers.

Gareth Capon, Grabyo CEO said: “The campaign from Gymshark is a great example of how live video on social media plays such a major role in marketing and raising brand awareness. Gymshark has a customer base which is highly active on social platforms and using engaging, interactive broadcasts enables creates a strong connection between customers and brands. It has been great working with the Gymshark team and demonstrates the potential for live social broadcasting for brands.”

Ronald Kafesu added: “Grabyo has played a key role for us. The platform allows us to customise our live streams, focusing our productions for a local audience regardless of where we are. Having the capability to design our own graphics, use community features and manage streams easily makes it exceptionally easy to deliver a successful broadcast.”