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Eugenia Merigo develops media strategies for EssilorLuxottica’s sports brands, including Oakley, in the U.K. and across Europe and Asia. Merigo and her team have a data-driven approach to generating concrete business impact and growing their brands coherently and innovatively.
During major sporting events, there’s a lot going on — it’s joyously noisy. After all, everyone wants to join the conversation and ride the wave (or in this case, the powder) of global enthusiasm.
This year, we wanted to use major winter sporting events as a podium to strengthen the positioning of Oakley, our premium brand for sport eyewear, apparel, and accessories.
To carve through the flurry of global excitement, we chose to address a specific, truly interested audience. To achieve this, we used YouTube to capture audience attention and build a trustworthy, authentic experience for prospective customers already interested in — and engaging with — sports.
Team Oakley breaks the ice with elite talent
For Oakley, major sporting events represent the ideal moment to tell our story with authority, by partnering closely with our athlete brand ambassadors. Our relationship with the athletes goes beyond sponsorship. It’s a partnership based on a constant, mutually beneficial dialogue, which allows us to design and test products that meet their needs and specifications, with the aim of optimising performance.
It was on this foundation that the “Aura by Oakley” collection was born last winter. In it, we reinterpret our most iconic models with an iridescent colour treatment, which our brand ambassadors tested in competition. The name came from exploring what makes these elite athletes unique, that being the invisible and constant energy that guides them daily — their “aura”.
The hero video “We See Your Aura”, which we launched on our YouTube channel, is a tribute to this essence. It celebrates the years of preparation work and months of recovery time surrounding the single moment of brilliance that is the event itself. The mental strength, determination and resilience required to build excellence away from the spotlight, day after day.
YouTube Select: Carving the perfect media track for our campaign
The right creative alone wasn’t enough to make the message resonate. We also needed a media infrastructure capable of amplifying it. We chose media placement that would give us visibility whilst remaining unerringly consistent with Oakley’s values of excellence.
So, we delivered “We See Your Aura” exclusively in the U.K., France, and Italy, using YouTube Select’s’ “Sports” lineups. This allowed us to deliver our ads within the top 5% of YouTube’s premium sports content, flanked by the most-watched and relevant sporting videos, including those from key creators in snowboarding and skiing. We wanted to be exactly where fan attention was at its highest.
Within this ecosystem, we integrated 15-second non-skippable formats. The YouTube Select context guaranteed an audience who already wanted to listen, while the non-skippable format meant the message was consumed in its entirety, maximising the connection with the audience.
The distribution strategy aimed for a deliberate balance between devices. We balanced mobile and Connected TV (CTV) to cover the entire experience and meet the sporting viewer at every stage of their watching journey.
The results: Snowballing engagement
This strategy meant Oakley was synonymous with world-class performance during winter sporting events.
The video campaign generated high attention, with an overall video completion rate (VCR) of over 85% across all countries.
In the U.K., we recorded a 12.5% increase in ad recall, with a peak of 13.5% generated specifically by CTV. This shows that when the context is premium, audience attention is not only captured, but retained.
Integrating this YouTube media push with our physical activations at sporting venues and Out-Of-Home efforts fuelled unprecedented business growth. Apparel sales increased by over 8X and eyewear sales grew by 41% compared to the pre-winter sports period.
Why authentic storytelling never gets left out in the cold
The success of this approach — which we will repeat during future international sporting events — tells us that our media strategy should always be a natural extension of our identity that builds trust and drives brand premium perceptions.
After all, as no marketer will need telling, fans now have an infallible radar for credibility. So when the brand supporting the athlete is the same one speaking about performance in a premium context, the result is real and lasting attention.
Looking forward, we will continue to invest in quality, and prioritise spaces that enhance our positioning. I am convinced that, even in complex scenarios like major sporting events, our brand’s credibility and authenticity will remain the most powerful multipliers for our investments.
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