Product Strategy & Inspiration
For New Balance Football and ZAK Agency

New Balance had a problem. They were not only outspent by the big three football boot manufacturers, but they were our muscled in the core areas of cultural inspiration – gaming, music and fashion and needed new inspiration.

Their Tekela and Furon boots were the jewels in their portfolios. Researched intimately and made for hard running midfielders and penalty box strikers respectively, but they were beginning to just look like every other boot in the market.

The performance was unquestionable, but the aesthetics needed to be more distinct to set them apart from Nike, adi and Puma.

From working with New Balance’s marketing department, I was introduced to their product team who wanted a workstream which would inspire different thinking and result in unique looking boots.

I did a series of workshops where I encouraged their team to look for inspiration away from the well-worn tropes of gaming, fashion and music. Instead from nature, architecture and how high fashion as opposed to sport fashion uses each of these.

The result were a range of truly unique looking boots which in turn achieved a significant sales uplift in an incredibly culturally contested market.