Submitted by Smoking Gun

Dare 2b Celebrity Partnerships

Smoking Gun built a four-personality influencer programme for sportswear brand Dare 2b, with the Fleur East TikTok Duets strand alone achieving more than 150,000 engagements.

Content organically reached more than 300,000 people.organic reach (people)
the content achieved more than 150,000 engagementssocial media engagements

Case in 60 seconds

Dare 2b wanted high profile influencer collaborations that went beyond short-lived advertisements and endorsements, which meant celebrity association alone would not build the brand love, loyalty and audience growth the sportswear brand was after.

The campaign appears to turn on the reading that a single celebrity cannot stand in for a whole sportswear customer base, because dance audiences, grassroots football and everyday summer movement are separate interests that each need their own personality and format.

Rather than one endorsement deal, Smoking Gun partnered with four personalities in a different way each, so the content matched the lifestyle and the platform behaviour of the strand of Dare 2b's audience it was made for.

Fleur East made TikTok Duets with dance content creators in Dare 2b activewear carrying unique discount codes; Jermaine Jenas surprised a Cheshire Sunday League team at training and kitted them out; Laura Whitmore ran an Instagram series on moving more; Pixie Lott fronted the On Piste collection across e-commerce, retail and digital advertising.

Smoking Gun reports the Fleur East content achieved more than 150,000 engagements and the Laura Whitmore series organically reached more than 300,000 people, with product placement including This Morning, MailOnline and Women's Health.

Strategy Breakdown

The primary strategy-learning section — interpretation, not a press-release summary.

Dare 2b's customer base across different lifestyles, interests and ethics, with the four partnerships aimed at separate strands of it including dance audiences, football enthusiasts and people moving more over the summer.
Celebrity endorsement in sportswear risks reading as a paid placement with no connection to how people actually move, so Smoking Gun built each partnership around an activity the personality already does rather than a posed product shot.
Based on the available evidence, a performance sportswear brand has to be credible across very different kinds of activity, from dancing to grassroots football to walking, which one spokesperson cannot cover convincingly.
Dare 2b product was placed inside the content as what the personality wore while doing the activity, from the statement activewear collection in the TikTok Duets to the kit given to the Sunday League squad.
The Whitmore strand appears built on the observation that summer movement is mostly ordinary, covering yoga, walks and pottering at home, so showing the collection inside daily routines suggests a closer match to how the audience uses it than a performance setting would.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • YouTube

Partners

  • Smoking Gun (lead_agency)

Participation mechanic

  • Followers were invited to duet-adjacent dance content and given unique discount codes as an incentive to shop, while the Whitmore series carried links to shop the collection.

Creator role

  • Fleur East — creator
  • Jermaine Jenas — creator
  • Laura Whitmore — creator
  • Pixie Lott — creator

Results & Evidence

MetricValueResult type
organic reach (people)Content organically reached more than 300,000 people.reach
social media engagementsthe content achieved more than 150,000 engagementsengagements

Why Smoking Gun's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Casting several personalities against separate audience strands rather than one against the whole base lets each partnership carry its own format, which is why a TikTok Duet, a grassroots surprise and an Instagram routine series could sit inside one programme.

  2. 2

    Attaching unique discount codes to creator content gives an engagement-led format a purchase route, and the page's pairing of codes with the 150,000 engagements figure suggests the shopping incentive was designed into the content rather than added around it.

  3. 3

    A celebrity partnership that extends into e-commerce, in-store retail and digital advertising, as the On Piste With Pixie Lott collection did, reads as a product proposition rather than a communications one, which gives the association something to sell beyond reach.

  4. 4

    Running national product placement alongside creator activity gives the same hero products a second surface, and Smoking Gun frames that combination as supporting brand awareness while positioning Dare 2b as a performance sports brand.

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