Footasylum boosts awareness, conversion with original YouTube programming

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 13, 2020

Sports shoe chain Footasylum has managed to boost its profile on YouTube after creating new original TV programming for its channel.

The programming is called Locked In and Does The Shoe Fit and in the week since the former — a daily reality TV show — started broadcasting, “it has seen assisted conversions from the Footasylum YouTube Channel increase to 468% like-for-like vs 2019”. It's produced by Cowshed Social.

Meanwhile, Does The Shoe Fit is a speed-dating show made exclusively for Footasylum, which had 1 million viewers in 12 hours last week.

Content is key for many retailers and brands today, especially as they target Gen Z consumers for whom video and YouTube are particular obsessions.

Two years ago, the Footasylum YouTube channel was relaunched “in order to be seen as an entertainment company” by its core audience”. Since then, the channel has seen a 600,000 subscriber increase, in addition to a combined 107 million views and the channel has now reached 1.1 billion impressions. Programming via the channel regularly gets 2.3 million viewers per episode.

Locked In launched on November 4 and runs until November 18 with daily episodes dropping at 7pm. It sees 10 YouTubers “stripped of all their technological devices and left in a house-share with no connection to the outside world for two weeks”. 

The participants include true crime vlogger Eleanor Neale, MMA fighter Joel Morris (aka JMX) and football YouTuber Eman Balogun (aka SV2).

The stars of the show, who have a combined 1.58 billion YouTube views, compete in daily challenges and secret tasks for a chance to win money for their charity of choice. 

Si Lloyd, Footasylum's Culture Marketing Manager, said: “Our most ambitious project to date, it will give our audience a full immersive experience and allow them to drive the narrative. We believe that this is an environment where we can create a genuine connection with our audience, learn from them, nurture them as loyal customers and this new format will give them a reason to unite and have a proper laugh in an otherwise difficult time.”