Inside the rise (and coming fall?) of marketings infatuation with sneakerheads [Video]

Following more collabs and award wins than we can count, as part of The Drum’s Fashion & Beauty Focus, we ask: How did marketers become so obsessed with online shoe fanatics? (And no, it’s not just because they spend loads on shoes.)

Take a look through the last few years of award-winning marketing work and you’ll see one word over and over: sneakerheads, sneakerheads, sneakerheads.

There’s no need for false mystery here: one reason is that these communities are big. On Reddit alone, sneaker communities total over 10 million members, but that’s the tip of an iceberg of blogs, websites, Instagram accounts and IRL groups so big that nobody’s ever bothered to try to measure it. And they spend big, too. Estimates of the global sneaker industry’s size go as high as $90bn, with a resale market of over $10bn.

A 2023 YouGov report cast sneakerheads as a golden goose for marketers…

Tags Digital Marketing, Global, Global Marketing, Marketing Ideas, Strategies