I had a skinhead for the biggest QBRQuarterly Business Review - basically a big meeting that gives the main stakeholders the most important updates about the quarter just gone, and the plan moving forward. of my life.
It was January 2021. Which I remember less as a month, and more part of one large blurry “Lockdown”.
Letting the kids shave my head as “something to do” gives you an idea of how desperate I might have been at the time for ideas.
We lived in a townhouse - a converted police station. It had no backdoor, back windows, or side windows.
My view of the world was about as narrow as it gets.
If I remembered to clap the NHS out the window, I’d dedicate a portion of the applause to the only reach of nature I could see - the slow reclaim of an abandoned OneStop Shop across the road. When it rained, I could smell the wet leaves from its carpark.
Between the family “activities” I conjured up, and the brief moments at the window, I was at my desk - QBR-ing.
In the “Competitor Spotlight” section of this QBR, there was a “New Threat” on the radar in Gymshark.
Gymshark had increased its discoverability across non-brand search in some categories we cared about.
How did they do it? I’m not certain.
See, nothing we found in the usual SEO checks really stood out. The most notable thing was the increase in search volume for brand keywords like “Gymshark Black Friday”.
So, how did they do that? Could be a million reasons. But one theory became quite interesting…
At the time, Gymshark were working with creators like KSI - before he became more famous for Prime, or boxing, or Britain’s Got Talent.
He was part of a campaign that had creators teasing the Gymshark early Black Friday campaign, Big Deal Energy, in trailer videos that, just before they announced the date, cut off and scrambled.
You can see one here:
The questions in the room were fun …
What if this campaign triggered more people to search for “Gymshark Black Friday”?
What if that helped Google see Gymshark as more relevant to the sale period?
What if that extra demand was part of the reason Gymshark was rising in non-brand search visibility?
It may or may not have been deliberate as an SEO play from Gymshark at the time. And there are always many moving parts behind shifts in search visibility. But I was giddy about it (even if I was on the wrong side of it).
I’ve always loved connected organic marketing stories like this. Even if you’re looking out of a single window, or channel, there’s always more to see.
This felt like it could be a deliberate creator-driven relevance campaign. And it was enough for a big brand to take notice of a younger Gymshark at the time.
A big deal. Big picture marketing - playing out in an SEO QBR.
The same kind of big picture marketing is reclaiming channel-specific car parks all around us right now. AI search briefs are demanding it more openly. I’m here for it.