Plenty of apps already track your miles, and Strava and Garmin do it well. Receipts, on the other hand, lives at the front desk: you tap-in when you walk into your studio or meet your run club in the park, and you earn toward rewards just for being there. Gyms get the retention tool they can’t build themselves, for free. Brands reroute the money they’d have burned on Instagram into the exact communities they can’t fake their way into, and convert at a far higher rate. Nike is already using it to power check-ins across its Project Moonshot marathon program.

Receipts is betting on the front door, not the feed.

We sat down with the founders, Victor and Steph, to chat about what they’re building, why they’re betting on IRL, and how they’re handing brands the keys to reaching in-person community.

Steph: Both of us have different narratives of how we got into the fitness world. But for me, it’s something that has been a huge part of my life for a really long time.

I was in a serious accident when I was four years old, so I think fitness, sport, being active has been something that I really try not to take for granted–ever. Fast forward a couple decades living in New York, I discovered the NYC running community, and that really changed my life for the better forever.

Victor: Steph only started running a handful of years ago, and it was, like, BQ for Boston three times.

Victor: We relaunched in June, but in our chats with a lot of different people the past year–gyms, studios, brands, and our community of runners and athletes–we realized that there was one part of Receipts that was missing.

From the last year and a half [we built] the IRL component. So, this new version of Receipts now rewards people for showing up in person, and typically at the places they’re already at with their friends. There’s fitness studios, run clubs at public parks, and other spaces in New York City. We help those businesses drive foot traffic and engage their members.

And then on the flip side, we also help brands who are currently spending a lot of money on ads repurpose the money they’re already spending to directly reach folks, and in turn reward them for supporting local businesses.

Steph: It functions like a tap in. So you download and you’re earning towards rewards as you go and check in and show up continually with your community.

It’s still early days for us, but the attraction has been really wonderful. So far, we’re in almost 100 locations around New York and, yeah, I mean, we’re growing.

Check-ins are growing week over week, and on the brand side we’re also converting–from our understanding–at a much, much higher rate than Instagram.

MacKenzie: What’s the feedback been like from the gyms and studio owners?

Steph: So, before we fully rolled this out, we were just kind of experimenting with a few locations in New York.

A couple F45 studios, a couple of our local gyms here. And retention’s a really big problem for the industry. Especially in New York. They expressed a hard problem to solve: they want an engagement or loyalty program, but there’s only so much that they can offer.

We took that idea and kind of pocketed it for Receipts, because there’s all these brands on the demand side that want to reach these IRL communities

Tatum: That’s incredible.

Victor: We actually don’t charge the gyms or studios. We help them for free–and help solve the retention member engagement issue–and we make money on the brand side. And if this all works out, people get rewarded for being more active with their friends, in person.

Gyms and studios generate more revenue, brands convert at a much higher rate, so everyone wins.

Mackenzie: You’ve created a business model where you’re essentially a community pillar for these people, too.

Victor: We’re just bringing more to the user, especially in a lot of sports that are really expensive.

Mackenzie: Absolutely. Take running: if you’re marathon training and you have to fuel yourself before, during, and after, and Iyour shoes only last for so many miles. And to go to an event, not only are you going to participate in the event, but if you don’t live there, that’s a travel weekend.

I think the way that you’ve positioned yourself as a community pillar is really interesting, especially positioning the brands as the buy-in here.

You’re there to keep people coming back. I think you’ve really hit on something that’s missing, especially the IRL piece that I think a lot of people are missing and are flooding back to.

_{Image courtesy of Fit Insider}

Victor: We leave our puck with some info cards at the front desks of our gym and studio partners. So, when folks come in, they see it and understand what is happening. They simply tap in on their phone.

We have some in public parks and on bridges around New York City, and these are great because people are running with their friends and they’re checking in and tapping as they go.

Hopefully, their friends are asking, “what was that?” And they’re kind of onboarding their friends on their long run.

Tatum: Do you guys have partnerships? I know you have gym partnerships, but for run clubs or those kind of organizations, how do you navigate that?

Victor: Yeah, we do. We’ve been giving pucks to some friends who are the leaders of some run clubs in New York City, and that’s been really great for us.

_{Video credit @lorragram on instagram}

Mackenzie: I’m so interested in the way you’ve connected these three thing–studio and fitness, person, and brand–in a way that I think that like Strava or Garmin or some of these other apps are doing but not necessarily in person.

I want to hear more about the conversations you’re having with brands. How are you differentiating your business? Because I can’t imagine that you sell this to a brand and they’re not immediately saying, “yes, let’s do this.”

Steph: Great question. I mean, it’s like, it’s early days for us too. And so we now have our first handful of paying brands on the platform.

We’re working with Nike, Function Health, Hyperice, Create, Fazit, Myo Physical Therapy, Cadence, Pao Labs, SWEETFEET, Freaks of Nature, Huron, Pruzan, and have more in the tank we’re working to add.

There’s a natural inclination for all these brands to want to access IRL communities, you know, and it’s really tough to build that community yourself.

And it’s just a lot of work and it’s outside of the primary business that they’re focused on. And so allowing folks to direct access to these communities and high intent, high value customers. So, creating this other channel for these brands to really drive demand for the products that they’re offering is valued highly.

Tatum: What’s been like maybe your biggest surprise or challenge as you guys have been building this thing–pouring so much love into it, trying to bring people together.

Victor: The biggest challenge? Wow, I don’t know. I think one of the challenges, and we’re still trying to navigate this, is people really want custom experiences for their communities.

So we’re powering the rewards experience for Nike Project Moonshot as well. So Nike has a marathon training program in New York City every year. This is the first year where it’s open to everyone, and we’re powering their check-in and reward experience for the entire program for New York.

So every four check-ins, when you arrive at Nike events you get rewarded by Nike and their partners. This is a custom experience for them, and we’re finding out that more people want custom experiences.

We’re kind of just starting to explore what we can do with this kind of physical presence and verification technology that we’re exploring, so it’s been challenging to balance that with the core business of the network that we’re trying to build.

They kind of tie in together, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff we could do.

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“Receipts is building a platform that rewards people for being offline and active, while supporting local communities, and helping brands repurpose money they would’ve spent on social media ads. Everyone wins except big tech.”

Receipts is available now in the App Store + on their website receipts.xyz

Check ins are live in 100+ locations in NYC and spreading to more cities quickly (tell your gym or local run club if you want to get involved!).

Press Contacts

Victor Ma
victor@receipts.xyz
Receipts

Stephanie Harris
steph@receipts.xyz
Receipts

Zach Litoff was tapped in by HYLO Athletics to create mixed media animations for the drop of their Impact 2 runner this past August.

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Hylo is a running brand on a mission to make the highest performing running shoes with the lowest possible impact. Their decision to bring in handmade mixed media animations, created with found materials by Zach—no AI involved—is so beautifully on-brand.

Zach Litoff is an artist and designer based in San Francisco.

He’s created work for Nike, The Boston Marathon, Bay to Breakers, The Super Bowl, The SF Giants, Brooks Running, Hoka, and Apple.

His work focuses on movement and sports culture.

For more on Zach Litoff and Litoff Studio, check out the interview we did with the artist himself.

Thank you, Zach! Follow Zach’s work @litoffstudios, purchase merch on his website here, and HIRE HIM FOR YOUR NEXT PROJECT here!.

In good form,

Tatum Brandt: I feel like I’ve been following your work for forever.

Zach Litoff: Thank you.

Tatum Brandt: I’m such a mega fan, I would love to hear a little bit more about your background, what got you in [certain doors].

Zach Litoff: I started blending [my college art work] with my personal passions, and that was kind of the start of me starting LitoffStudios. But at the time, my number one priority was trying to run fast in college. Fast forward a few years later, I graduated college and had been working in an agency.

Now, I understand how agencies work, how to pitch yourself, and I understood enough about the numbers where I was like, okay, maybe I could try to freelance.

I still had a lot of friends that were now pro-runners and working in the industry. So, rather than just doing fun drawings of them and hearing about their jobs, they were able to bring me into projects. And at the time, it was all pretty small projects, but it was like, “hey, I’m running a pro race, do you want to come and help?” Or, “hey, we need a t-shirt for this event, can you create something?”

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I kind of just continued to ride the wave of, you know, anytime a project will come, go all in on it. And I think not a lot of people are as willing to make content around their work. Not that I’m the best at it, but I feel like I have a good skill of having really solid work and being willing to try and, you know, go the content route. And it’s grown and grown. I feel like it’s still growing, and I’m still figuring out what I want to grow it into. I’m starting to think more long term, but I’m a freelance designer with the added benefit of social media. I love content and love talking about my work, and have deep roots and admiration for running. I feel like that niche has kind of carried me pretty far as well.

Tatum Brandt: Yeah, I can see that. Was there a project or a moment on social or something that happened, that came to you that you were like, oh, this, this could be actually a career path for me?

Zach Litoff: By the time that project came around, I had already jumped into it. I think the first project that, like, made me take it a little bit [more] seriously, was a t-shirt I did for Nike for a run that they were putting on. Knowing now what I know about the industry, that was a very small project and shouldn’t have given me as much confidence as it gave me–but at the time, I was like, “oh, if Nike’s willing to work with me, maybe I could build something with this.” And that gave me enough to keep going. It was also one of my first paid projects that wasn’t a friend, so that was nice.

But then a year later, I did the t-shirts and a full rebrand for Bay Breakers. And that was, I would say, the one where [I felt like I made it].

[Following the post about that race] one of the people who followed me knew the owner of the race and was, like, hey, do you want to come get drinks with me and the owner of the race and we can talk about your ideas?

Tatum Brandt: That’s so cool.

Zach Litoff: So I went to some bar in Marina Tipsy Pig, we got drinks, and I basically said, I want to design your t-shirts. I feel like, like, me being local and in the running world, I could crush it. And I had learned from working in an agency, you make your small pitch, you make a medium pitch, and you make a big pitch. And they almost always take the medium pitch.

MacKenzie Ludwig: But they took the big pitch?

Zach Litoff: Yeah, I was like, you should let me rebrand your entire race. You need a new logo, you need a new website, you need all new assets. [I told them], everything is outdated, and you guys need to revamp. And the owner was like, oh, wow, this kid’s talented, young, and incredibly cheap.

MacKenzie Ludwig: Like, yeah let’s do it!

Zach Litoff: But I think that realizing that if you take yourself a little bit seriously, someone else that has a lot more power will take you twice as seriously. And having the ability to go have a real impact on something made me realize I could probably keep riding this momentum, and see where it goes. And this is where it is now.

MacKenzie Ludwig: That’s awesome.

Tatum Brandt: Do you have a dream brand you’d want to reach out to you, or to get hired or commissioned for some work? Do you have a favorite type of project to work on? Like, in an ideal world, it’s always a rebrand plus, or?

Zach Litoff: My favorite type of project is one that lets me [have some creative freedom]. Like, those are my favorite projects because, especially if it’s core to something I care about, I don’t really care exactly what type of work it is. I’m always trying to, like, hide my little hidden messages and style–and it’s not some deep agenda, it’s because I love running and happiness. With the Bay Breakers project, I was trying to bring San Francisco together, and this was a race where I felt like the running community and this race really embodied that happiness.

I ran that race every year throughout college, and now I still run it, so it’s been 10 years. So, that [project] meant a lot to me. Same with, like, when I did work for the Boulder Boulder, like, that was an apparel project, but I had pictures of me in a backpack my parents were carrying me in while running it. So, I think what makes me care most about projects is the meaning they have.

I did a project for the Boston Marathon, too, and that one I remember was awesome. They let me lean into the idea that running is punk, and that it’s this countercultural thing right now and let me get a little bit political.

Zach Litoff: So, if I’m able to feel authentic in the work I’m doing, not just representing the brand 100% of what they want, which sometimes, you know, you gotta do. Like, I’m not going into every brand being, like, let me make my statement. And sometimes they want a shirt, so you make a shirt type of thing. What excites me the most is when they’re interested in what I have to say.

Tatum Brandt: What’s your process like? You know, the classic question you get as an artist. What’s your process like in getting inspiration? Somebody comes to you with a brief and you’re like, okay, how do you find inspiration?

Zach Litoff: I feel like, when I was growing up, it was very much like, everything should start paper and pencil–do your sketches, then go from paper and pencil sketch, now we can go and digitize this and make it into this usable graphic. But, I start digital, and then I go handmade later, ideally. I think like, when you have an iPad in front of you, generally, or any form of technology, you’re not limited. You can work so much quicker when you’re able to double tap to erase, it makes your brain think in a way that it doesn’t when you’re on paper and pencil–thinking more permanently when you have to erase.

Tatum Brandt: The way you described why working digitally first–I haven’t heard somebody describe it that eloquently before that’s exactly it. There’s this quote, where it’s like, ‘create like a child, edit like a scientist’. I feel like being digital lets you do that, because you literally have everything in front of you, can make whatever you want.

Zach Litoff: I feel like I am always trying to gather inspiration. Then, when it comes to the actual project–I hate going into a project without actually having ideas, I try not to come into a project without any ideas. I like having 20-30 jotted down ideas, or half finished ideas, or sketches I’ve started. And then, when a project comes to me, and they want a t-shirt design, I’m like, “I already have like a half finished shirt that I’m going to adapt for this project.”

I have like this like pool of ideas that I can pull from and apply to a project. [This was the process] for the ‘Running is Punk’ for The Boston Marathon. The music I’d been listening to was very 1970s through 80s, like British punk, I’d been researching how that affected their politics, and I’d been deep into this and doing sketches and making things already down that route. I was like, “oh, I kind of already have this done.” A lot of designs I do are like that.

Sometimes, I’ll come into a project and I’m like, “damn, I actually haven’t done anything that fits this problem.” Then I’ll have to do deep research dives, go deep into Pinterest, look through drawings I’ve done in the past [and go from there].

Tatum Brandt: Especially with the Boston Marathon project, if you’re already tuned in to something that’s happening within culture, even if it’s not what the talking heads are all talking about is trending at the moment. Like, okay, collectively we’re all feeling this cultural angst and punk, and because you’re coming from a very authentic inspiration spot, I feel like for a lot of the projects you work on, that’ll make it a little more culturally relevant, because you are inside of the culture of that moment.

MacKenzie Ludwig: Definitely.

Zach Litoff: I just did a project for HYLO that’s coming out now–they’re a sustainable shoe brand. So, that was one where I had ideas and things that were interesting to me, but if we’re going to go sustainable and do this shoe, I’m going to collect materials [for this project]. I was collecting sand from the beach and that was something I hadn’t done before, nor was it a half finished project, but it was like an idea that I wanted to apply to the brand and their mission.

^Litoff Studios for HYLO

Tatum Brandt: I have kind of two different questions. One, in your experience working with brands, how can brands best work with artists or freelancers or people like you? Like what have you found to be the best experiences and work? Is it working with the Nikes or even like Boston?

Zach Litoff: It kind of varies team to team, but the best is when I have one person on their team who’s like a ‘friend’. Like they’re the ones who are [championing] your ideas. They’re like your person on the inside.

Tatum Brandt: Like, believing your vision and are like, I’ll fight for it.

Zach Litoff: They’ll talk to me authentically, they’re almost a translator between what the brand really wants, but also what you really want–and they’re not so high where they only care about the brand, and they’re not your best friend, they’re truly a middle ground communicator.

Tatum Brandt: That’s a really good answer, because especially if someone can communicate to you why the brand said no. Because, most often, you know, I feel like brands are [trying to keep] your vision from be expressed, there’s so many other factors. Like, if limiting factor for this thing we want to do is budget, then you can go away and say, okay, well, here’s a way we can get around that and have the same result. I think that does make a better partnership on all sides because you’re involved in some of the problem solving.

Zach Litoff: It makes a project really successful. Brands, you know, not seeming like they’re only trying to get money out of the project–even though it’s a business and no one would judge them for that–but when they’re also interested in the same things you are it makes it more fun.

Tatum Brandt: So, artists or freelancers in your position–maybe you’re five years ahead of where they are. What advice would you give somebody if they’re trying to work with a Nike or get their work out there?

Zach Litoff: I think it’s different things for different people, which is somewhat a cop-out answer. But I always tell people like you need to hone in the way you’re presenting your work. I think the one thing I would say is make sure whenever you’re posting your work, don’t be afraid to just continue to post and post and post or show and show and show.

The work itself doesn’t actually need to be that good, but the way it’s shared needs to be good. And I think that’s one thing a lot of people miss. If you made a really cool animation, great. If you don’t color match the whites of the background and now it’s flashy and weird, it doesn’t matter–they won’t trust you. But, you also can’t be so nitpicky that you’re not posting your work. Just throw things at the wall.

Tatum Brandt: Yeah, it’s not about the amount of followers, it’s the type of people who are following you.

Zach Litoff: And often, it’s the quiet work of a faceless account that’s on private, that then reaches out to you, and it’s the CMO of running at Nike, or those kinds of company heads.

MacKenzie Ludwig: I feel like the way you speak is, like I said, so humble. But you have worked with Brooks, the Giants, the Super Bowl. So I’m interested in the early days, what did that ramp look like from the smaller races designs and how you ended up making art for the Super Bowl

Zach Litoff: It really is just a staircase of one project to the next. Every big project comes from a connection, and every small project adds validity for them to pitch you. And it’s a tough way, but it’s not like nepo baby type connections. It’s connections where you have to build them and be, like, you know, it takes work, too.

That first Nike project where I described the local run they wanted a t-shirt for, they loved it and brought it up in their team meeting, apparently. And her team thought it was awesome. They probably also were like, “oh my God, you only charge that much?!”

Zach Litoff: Now, I’m doing work with Carlsbad, and now I have an arsenal of: he does race t-shirts, does branding, etc. At the same time, I’m making content and making some of my own multimedia works, and a lot of my contacts are getting promoted and going into bigger roles and their coworkers are seeing my work. That basically leads to how I’d get the bigger Nike projects.

And people don’t understand, I think, a lot of these projects with big brands–it doesn’t always have to be a big project for the brand, for you to present it as a huge project and to gain validity and gain respect from having taken it.

MacKenzie Ludwig: Yeah, that’s great advice.

Tatum Brandt: And, it’s so cheesy and cliche, but it’s that famous quote: “do good work and be nice to people.” Like, people should enjoy working with you.

Zach Litoff: Yeah, people are watching, and the industry is so small and circular. So if you work with one rep at Nike, then you don’t know who’s watching.

Thank you, Zach! Follow Zach’s work @litoffstudios, purchase merch on his website here, and HIRE HIM FOR YOUR NEXT PROJECT here!

Two big fitness brands leaned into the same cultural moment this summer. One got canonized, and the other got a thousand TikTok duets. Ladder’s Stronger, Not Smaller campaign became a defining moment for Strong Girl Summer, and Gymshark’s Bratz collab became a case study in how fast the internet can turn on you. Same market, same “strong woman” tailwind, wildly different receptions.

To be clear, this is in no way a Gymshark drag–gymshark is a well established brands in fitness. But, like so many well-established brands today, they released a campaign that received blowback. Exhausting as it may seem, marketing campaigns are no longer a one-way conversation that brands direct at their target consumer. Brands are marketing to a new generation of consumers that knows their attention is for sale, and, for the first time has put a price tag on it. If we are being sold to, we demand to be sold to correctly.

On paper, the Bratz campaign is a genuinely great idea: Y2K nostalgia is printing money, and with “passion for fashion” turned into “passion 4 fitness” the campaign basically writes itself. Plenty of customers bought the collection and loved it, but there was something curious that happened between the launch of this collab and the people of the internet deciding whether or not it hit the mark.

The brand proposes, the audience disposes

Here’s the uncomfortable truth every marketer should know: you don’t get the final edit on your own campaign. You create content with a specific intent, and then the audience assigns the meaning. And in 2026, the audience has a much bigger distribution network than you do.

Gymshark’s intent was clearly celebratory: lean into the nostalgia of the doll we grew up with, lean into y2k fun, throw a popup in Miami, let the girls have a moment. But intent is often invisible. At this Miami activation, what attendees saw and focused on were a makeup station at a gym activation, fluffy pink and purple weights, a “Baddie Building” sign, and models styled in heels for activewear.

Individually, completely harmless. Assembled and posted to a feed already primed by Stronger, Not Smaller, they read to a loud slice of the audience as the exact thing the Strong Girl Summer moment was pushing against: cute over capable, hot over strong. This spawned a few critical talking head videos sparking loud conversation, and Gymshark pulled the post about the activation.

Now, none of these elements are objectively anti-feminist. Many women wear heels, we do our makeup, we like pink— and plenty of women think “look hot, lift heavy” is a completely fine message. But objectivity often loses out to subjectivity in the digital landscape. A campaign doesn’t get judged on its dictionary meaning or intent, but rather on what it looks like next to everything else happening on the feed that week.

Two things collided, and they compounded

The second factor that had folks upset is the design of the collection itself. Bratz is loud, maximalist, rhinestoned, and unapologetic. Many were in the comments of the campaign teasers looking forward to buying into those traits they know and love from Bratz. What Gymshark released, however, was a clean, solid-color collection that appeared much like all their other apparel. This reception to this drop can be summed up in the single most-liked comment of the whole campaign: “Gymshark collabing with Gymshark.” Fans didn’t want new activewear with a logo, they wanted the Bratz-ness.

On their own, a slightly off collab is a Tuesday, a slightly clumsy activation is a learning opportunity—but when stacked together, they create a vacuum: a gap between the promise and the delivery, and the internet does not tolerate a vacuum. It fills it, fast.

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The actual takeaway (and it’s not “play it safe”)

The lesson is emphatically not that brands should sand off every edge until there’s nothing left. Spending real dollars and effort toward a campaign to deliver a safe and mild reception is too expensive. Today, you have to market for the cultural conversation as your audience has much more distribution power than you do as a brand. Brands like Ladder know this. They engineered a campaign that gives their audience tagline, slogan, mantra that they can adopt for themselves. They intentionally handed their audience a prompt to start a guided conversation.

The difference between these two campaigns wasn’t courage, it was control of the frame. Ladder handed the audience a sentence to run with and let them ascribe their own meaning, Gymshark handed the audience a set of props and let them assemble the story. And a crowd will always assemble the version that gets the most engagement.

Perception isn’t a PR problem you clean up afterward, it’s a design input you account for going into campaign planning. Don’t start with “what do we mean,” but rather “what will this look like the moment it leaves our hands, in the cultural context it’s being released into?” Gymshark’s own response was the healthiest part of the whole thing: take the feedback, and let it shape how you show up next time. That’s a brand that knows the audience is a co-author now, not an inconvenience to their marketing team.

Now of course, Gymshark is back on the scene with another swing with Megan Thee Stallion. Will this collab right the wrongs of Bratz? Time will tell…

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What do you think?

Real ones working on these projects know, there’s a LOT that goes into these campaigns that we don’t see. We’ve reached out to the Gymshark team for a follow-up to dig into what it’s like to plan and launch a collab like this and how to navigate pushback.

In the meantime, we’d love to hear from YOU. Have you worked on a campaign that didn’t hit the market like you thought it would? Drop a comment or DM anytime.

For those who want to dive deeper in their homework…

We could have a whole article on the art of a well-executed collab, but for now we’ll embed this talk from the king of collabs himself, Bimma Williams.

Original published Oct 6, 2026 by Mackenzie Ludwig. Updated an republished on Oct 20, 2026 by Tatum Brandt.

In August 2025, Christian McCaffrey left Nike. A year later he came back with equity (not just another celebrity endorsement), co-founding While on Earth and spending thousands of hours designing its new trainer himself.

Signing a famous name to a campaign still works, and it still moves product if done the right way. Nobody is pretending otherwise, but this week made the shift hard to ignore. Ilona Maher didn’t trow up a Burn Boot Camp ad on socials and walk away, she became its “Brand Champion” with a shared mission she was already living. Lululemon skipped the merch table in Sydney and built a record shop where attendees could create personalized “record” (very on the nose, but it worked) sleeves with personal mantras printed to make it unique and memorable. Athlos paid female runners a 2.1 million dollar purse and moved the whole meet to London to protect their season. Even Peloton, mid-reinvention, tied its new treadmill to an artist—hey Miley!—who was mid-reinvention of her own.

The talent used to lend the brand its face, but now it’s asking for a seat at the table.

1 · Miley x Peloton
Peloton launched "Let Yourself Run," fronting its first foldable treadmill, the Tread Flex, with Miley Cyrus and a short film scored to her new album. A brand mid-reinvention borrowing a star mid-reinvention.

@burnbootcampSome partnerships just make sense. @Ilona Maher x Burn Boot Camp is one of them. Strong looks good on Ilona Maher. It will look good on you too. We’re thrilled to welcome Ilona to Burn Nation as our (unofficial) Chief Motivation Officer 💪

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2 · Ilona Maher x Burn Boot Camp
Burn Boot Camp named Maher its newest "Brand Champion." The female-first strength franchise pairing with the athlete who made strength a whole personality: the rare deal where the talent + mission were already aligned.

3 · While on Earth x Christian McCaffrey
McCaffrey left Nike to help build While on Earth as co-founder and investor, and dropped The CMC, his first signature trainer a year in the making. Not as an endorsement, but an equitable. The clearest sign yet that athletes want a seat at the table, not just another campaign.

4 · Athlos
Alexis Ohanian's women-only meet crossed the Atlantic to head to London. Sporting a $2.1M purse (up from $773K), and wins from Sha'Carri Richardson and Keely Hodgkinson. (It also scrapped its NY date rather than run athletes into the ground)

@adventureswithcl@lululemon Record Shop 🎧💽 a unique Sydney Marathon Activation customising our own record sleeve 💽 #sydneymarathon #lululemon #recordshop

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5 · Lululemon x Sydney Marathon
Lululemon built a record Shop for Sydney Maraton weekend. DJs, printed personal mantras, coffee, and a print shop for custom record sleeve, instead of a product wall. The best part? Everything is free.

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When Ladder put Hilary Duff on the back page of The New York Times with three words, Stronger, Not Smaller, the campaign quickly grew bigger than both of them. Within days it was all over the Time 100 red carpet, TheSkimm, ESPN and creators’ feeds.

We sat down with Philip Edsel, who helped build Ladder’s short-form growth engine, to talk about what it takes to make a big swing last. He covered licensing everything you can, planning for the luck you can’t control, and giving culture an idea it can make its own. It turns out the work and the luck can’t be pulled apart. Here’s how they pulled it off.

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Philip Edsel: I think the interesting thing about this campaign is it has so many more layers than I think most of the marketing talking heads that have covered this have really, you know, understood, I think.

And yeah, I mean, it’s been fundamentally game-changing for our business. Which was already doing well, but now, you know, things are really, really exciting.

And it was kind of birthed out of a problem we had, which was, the business is doing really well, we’re growing really well, and we built this really incredible growth engine on short form, but we realized our mainstream awareness, our cultural awareness, was lacking and sort of crossed the chasm.

And there are only a handful of ways to go and really tackle that, and celebrity is one of them.

Tatum Brandt: I remember talking to you, maybe it’s been about a year ago now, about how you needed more brand awareness around Ladder.

Now you’ve done the ‘curse’ of doing such a good job with your coaches and having them bolster the brand, that you’re like, okay, next task is to increase Ladder’s brand recognition.

Mackenzie Ludwig: Which, oh my God, you guys, you succeeded.

Philip Edsel: Hopefully, yeah, hopefully it’s still, you know, up and to the right.

When I came on at Ladder, our CEO and I got together and basically we decided our bet was trying to figure out and crack the code on TikTok organic. This was in 2021-2022, which, you know, feels like not that long ago, but was still the Wild West days of TikTok.

But, thankfully we did that, because it was basically the whole story of how Ladder became the thing it is now, because of the growth engine we built on top of that with our coaches and our creator program.

We built such an impressive, or such an effective, short form growth engine with TikTok and Instagram and the ads that we run on them, and now we’re growing because we’re penetrating a very specific niche. So, now we’ve penetrated a very specific niche and it’s grown the business, but we need to hit the sort of zeitgeist and cultural conversation stuff.

Tatum Brandt: So I kind of wanted to get a little nitty gritty and talk about when you’re planning your campaigns.

We’re looking specifically at 2026, how did you find the narrative that you thought would break through into the bigger culture? Then later with, “Stronger, Not Smaller,” which also aligns with the goals that you’re trying to achieve.

Philip Edsel: Yeah, so it was interesting. The first campaign we were kind of going for the typical Skims ‘everybody’s wearing xyz’, you know, ‘Hillary Duff trains on Ladder’.

And that was the headline because, honestly, what we were solving for was awareness.

On the day we launched the campaign, we also did a full spread on the back page of the New York Times. With those ads, sometimes you want to take a little bit more of a stance or have a little bit more of a POV because of the audience that’s seeing it.

So, it’s a little bit of a different platform with different messaging, and we thought, okay, cool, let’s come up with something that feels a little bit more punchy.

That’s where “Stronger Not Smaller” came from.

Philip Edsel: What’s funny about the whole thing is it just so happened that Hillary on the launch day was in New York for a Time 100 event. And there was a Times journalist on the red carpet that just so happened to be a Ladder member and saw the campaign. And the first question she had for Hillary was about the campaign, and how “Stronger Not Smaller” is such a powerful message.

That video of her response, which was incredible because Hillary is amazing, just went crazy viral. Like, TheSkimm, ESPN women, BuzzFeed, they all picked it up.

And we had a lot of creators that were responding to the message and making it their own, but when that went viral, it became a hook in and of itself, or created a platform for people to talk about how they feel about that message.

And it became way bigger than just Ladder and Hillary Duff. Although, thankfully, we were the ones sort of creating that platform.

Tatum Brandt: We were wondering, okay, how manufactured was the campaign from beginning to end, versus, oh, this just happened? Because I feel like some legacy brands you see get these giant celebrity or athlete names, but the campaign doesn’t have a super long shelf life.

You just see the big name, it’s flashy, and you can kind of fumble the bag. And especially since this is Ladder’s first, I mean, real big swing with a big celebrity.

So, you know, number one, how do you kind of manufacture a campaign that will get that groundswell of UGC that will carry it to the triple viral?

Is that anything you can control, or was that a thought?

Philip Edsel: Oh, absolutely. I want to say it’s equal parts work and luck. The luck is definitely a part of it, but we set ourselves up so strategically to capitalize on anything that might happen.

However, there was a lot of luck involved.

I thought, when you go to pitch a celebrity, you send them the creative, and they’re like, oh, I love this or I don’t. And it’s not that at all. It’s that the agents and the managers don’t even present that to the person until they get a number that is worth their time.

Mackenzie Ludwig: So honestly, you’re taking a massive risk because you don’t know that creatively you’re aligned.

Philip Edsel: You also don’t know that your concept, that maybe only works for this one celebrity, is even going to be the concept that makes it to the actual end.

So, you’re taking a massive risk–really hoping that things go well and that they’re a good partner or that they agree with your creative, and that they’re a good partner that’s willing to go above and beyond sort of just the logo slap.

I want to say [Hilary] is a great partner. The lucky thing was, we knew when we were doing the contract that she had a record coming out, there was going to be a tour, which sounds awesome.

And in our minds, it’s okay, not only do we have a campaign, but, every time there’s a tour stop, let’s go run pop-ups and interviews outside the venue or, you know, so we were going to be there and there was additional stuff that we knew was going to happen.

But there was a plan to extend the shelf life, which you have to have. But, we didn’t know that she was going to do the press tour of all press tours on Call Her Daddy, on the cover of Glamour, on the cover of Sports Illustrated, until after we had signed the contract, which was a godsend.

Yeah, you know, all the other things that kind of happened along the way that have just been incredible, and were just sort of the luck piece of it all.

And so, that’s why I say now we’re thinking: okay, we figured out sort of how to arbitrage celebrity a little bit because we found the celebrity that sort of ascended normal fame and broke into the actual cultural conversation.

Philip Edsel: The problem is, the reason celebrity is not a great strategy is, the list of people that can do that is so small and it’s really hard to know who will be able to [succeed].

Tatum Brandt: That’s kind of the magic of what you do anyway–beyond celebrity is a good deal of luck, but you have to set yourself up to have all the cards in the right place for when you strike that lucky thing.

Tatum Brandt: My other question for you, is how do you think about all the channels that go around as you’re trying to say, okay, we want to extend the shelf life of this campaign?

You’ve got the boots on the ground around her core [tour] stops. You guys have mastered the short form viral strategy.

So, what is your perspective or how do you look at all the different channels that connect to a campaign?

Philip Edsel: If you’re going to write that check, you better have everything you can licensed.

Like, if you can only use it on social for X amount of time, it just makes it a really, really tough sell to extend it.

Hopefully it has a bigger life, which ended up happening [with the Hilary campaign]. But, we know the initial post will do pretty well.

But we got really excited about TV and CTV, and every piece of creative that we launch–you’ve already made it just throw it up on TV.

Tatum Brandt: Has it been working for you?

Philip Edsel: Yeah, it’s been awesome.

We’ve already done the production, so let’s just find a new channel to share it. And it’s a totally different audience than the people that were hitting on TikTok or Instagram.

The [in-person marketing] was a big one, too. We knew when she got announced as the Sports Illustrated swim cover and that she was going to be going to Miami for Swim Week, we were like, all right, let’s talk to Swim Week.

They’re not creative about how they partner, so we thought, that doesn’t seem that really exciting. But, what if we just took over every bus stop in Miami and South Beach?

And what if we hired a street team to go chalk the ground and put up posters? And we just did street interviews, which we ended up going down there and doing.

It was three of us. We wrapped a vehicle and we called the whole activation ‘Strong Girl Summer’, which is kind of the tie-in to Stronger Not Smaller and everything was pink.

We had an aerial banner and LED boats that floated down South Beach with Hillary on it.

And my favorite thing that we did was wrapping a tricked out Escalade that had lasers and stuff on the inside, and we hired Ben Bailey, who was the original host of Cash Cab, and we literally picked up people that were coming out of shows.

We got them into the car and we basically just drove around a little bit and we asked some questions around progressive overload, the benefits of strength training beyond aesthetics, and a lot of strength training stuff.

And then ultimately asked them, what does “stronger, not smaller” mean to you? And we got incredible soundbites. So, all that to say, the way that we licensed Hilary’s content and the usage rights that we got out of it helped us extend that life because we could go throw up bus stops and whatever else.

Last week, she played a sold out MSG for two nights, and we had a domination around the stadium, which was, essentially, all the ground ad signs.

And then, they call it the spectacular, the giant LED wall.

Tatum Brandt: And that thing went viral.

Philip Edsel: And, then you go read the comments, and they’re all insanely positive.

It’s amazing. I’ve been doing this for, you know, 20 weeks now or whatever, and that’s better testimonial proof than anything we can do.

Tatum Brandt: Yeah, it’s been like a huge smash. I feel like you have had so many smash hits that feel like luck, but it’s because you set yourself up to take full advantage of luck when it hits.

Philip Edsel: It’s strategic. Yeah, that’s always the, you know, I feel like that’s every podcast question—is it hard work or is it luck?

And I’m like, you can’t separate the two, you know, like you have to do the hard work and then you have to have some element of luck for it to actually go the way that you really want it to.

So, thankfully we’ve got both.

Tatum Brandt: You’ve got the shelf life with the “Stronger, Not Smaller” narrative, too.

Philip Edsel: Yeah, you asked one question about how do we extend the shelf life, and that was kind of my point about giving [the campaign] a tagline that wasn’t even about [only] Hillary, it was just more of an idea that helped extend the reach and the shelf life of the campaign.

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The biggest lesson from Ladder isn’t about landing a celebrity. It’s that a campaign lasts when it gives people an idea they can make their own. Stronger, Not Smaller spread because women saw themselves in it and took it further than any ad buy could. Ladder got the celebrity, but the idea is what kept the campaign going.

So go do the work, make room for the luck, and give people something worth talking about.

Thank you to Philip and the Ladder team for letting us in on how they did it. We can’t wait to see what they do next.

Somewhere between the rise of GLP1 before-and-afters and the return of indie sleaze ‘heroin-chic’, a strength-training app convinced the internet that 2026 was actually Strong Girl Summer. That app is Ladder, and through the help of cultural icon Hilary Duff, the face of their campaign, those three words, ’Stronger, Not Smaller’, managed to become a mission statement embraced by women around the world.

Your favorite talking heads clapped for Ladder when they landed our beloved Y2K pop star, but what we find most interesting, actually, is what it took to make a celebrity deal–one of the least reliable plays in marketing–hit fitness and wellness culture in a huge way, instead of fumbling the bag like we’ve seen many industry giants do with their A-list signings (*cough* Nike and Caitlin Clark *cough.*)

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A problem money can’t fix

Ladder didn't need a celebrity to grow, it simply needed to be known. If you haven’t been following Ladder’s meteoric rise, the brand had already won the hard way through coach-owned organic Tiktok. The issue they ran into, however, was that you could walk into a gym and ask a fitness girly or guy about Ladder and they’ve never heard of it.

Enter Hilary. Now, Ladder knew that in the middle of a nostalgia bull-market, Hilary’s new record would land perfectly with their target market. While the Ladder team had every “Hilary Buff” and Lizzie McGuire pun teed up, they were all rejected and where they landed was on a campaign that centered the reality of who Hilary–and her fans–is in her present life: a busy mom who lifts.

Sprinkle on the luck

The initial campaign was built around the simple statement, “Hilary Duff trains on Ladder.” The goal was awareness, not a message.

Now, on launch day, Ladder bought the full back page of the New York Times. Here, Ladder’s Head of Brand & Creative Philip Edsel felt that particular placement called for a sharper point of view because it reaches a different audience.

So they wrote a punchier line for that page. He described it as “not necessarily controversial,” but a clear stance that some people would react to. That line was “Stronger Not Smaller.”

The day the campaign went live, a Time 100 red-carpet reporter, who happened to be a Ladder member, asked Duff about the campaign. Her answer went nuclear across ESPN, BuzzFeed, and every women's vertical (although the Ladder mention was neatly clipped out). We’re talking zero paid spend with unbelievable visibility for the campaign.

People call that luck, but it was a healthy mix of luck and engineered virality by making the message bigger than your celebrity endorsement and then making sure it lives everywhere: the back page of the New York Times, TV, and stapled around town at every tour stop. It didn’t matter Ladder’s mention was clipped out of the red carpet interview, or that their logo wasn’t seen on every piece of cultural discourse–what mattered was that the brand was tied to a campaign that grew larger than life.

Stronger, Not Smaller took off like wildfire precisely because it wasn’t just about Hilary. It was a position, one you could co-sign, argue with, or stitch, and so it became a format other people made content inside of and about.

Capitalizing on cultural momentum

Now the key here, when a campaign grows beyond the brand, is to strategically capitalize on it and tie it back.

When Duff sold out MSG for two nights, Ladder took over marketing for the entire block with their slogan.

When the Ladder team found out about Hilary’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, they headed to Miami Swim Week where they turned everything pink and named the activation Strong Girl Summer outright: bus-stop takeovers, LED boats down South Beach, and a pink Escalade with the original Cash Cab host quizzing passengers on progressive overload and fitness basics.

And listen, the receipts spoke for themselves in the organic posts that followed. iPhone videos captioned “fine, I’ll sign up for Ladder,” and comment sections stacked with women confirming they actually did.

The secret sauce

Here’s the thing, Ladder never once said they were “anti-GLP1.” In a cultural discourse where women on Ozempic get roasted for how they lost it and women who aren’t get told they should, Ladder planted a flag on don’t shrink yourself and let the audience assign the rest of the meaning.

It didn’t hurt, of course, that Duff then landed one of four 2026 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit covers, and went on a massive press tour appearing in the likes of Call Her Daddy and Glamour.

And that’s the thesis: culture was already turning, and Ladder was the brand fluent enough to hand it a caption. The thing about “luck” in marketing and advertising is that you have to be ready to capitalize on it. What Ladder teaches us is that “being ready” is to stay tuned into culture, deeply understand your market, and double and triple down when you strike gold.

Ok, but what’s your take?

We’re also curious as to if you’d see the same momentum and success if this campaign was run by a much larger brand. Ladder’s team is small and scrappy (relatively speaking)–they were able to make quick decisions to capitalize on the unexpected. In a world where culture and sentiment move at literal lightspeed, will we see marketing departments reassemble to be smaller, more nimble, and able to operate with greater autonomy? I’d argue we already are.

Leave a comment

We’ve got a deeper-dive into this campaign in an interview with Ladder’s Head of Brand, Philip Edsel that I cannot wait to share with you. Until then, we’d love to hear what your experience has been working and operating inside this new world so drop your experience and predictions in comments.

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