Bené Eaton, chief marketing officer at Figs, shares how the scrubs manufacturer secured the first-ever partnership to outfit the U.S. medical at the Olympics, how it marketed the initiative and lessons learned for future games.
For three Olympic and Paralympic Games, Figs will be the apparel brand outfitting the 250 U.S. healthcare professionals on site.
Figs is a publicly traded scrubs manufacturer that generated $545.6 million in revenue in 2023, according to its earnings release. The brand has 2.6 million active customers and grew 7.9% year-over-year in 2023.
The most recent Summer Olympic Games in Paris were the first time that a brand provided clothing for the U.S. healthcare professions.
The partnership, which was a significant branding opportunity for Figs, allowed the healthcare professionals to look like a team, said Figs CMO Bené Eaton.
“Before Figs they just packed their bags with whatever they had and they didn’t have any sort of set uniform bringing them all together collectively,” Eaton said.
Figs created a patriotic product collection with design elements geared toward healthcare professionals needing to run on and off a field. It also sold those products to all healthcare professionals on its website throughout the games.
To spotlight the moment, Figs had several marketing initiatives including:
- A TV ad, called “Anatomy of a Champion,” that ran on linear and streaming TV throughout the Olympics. Figs featured Olympic hopeful athletes and medical professionals in the video, which was filmed at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic training facility in Colorado Springs.
- More than 4,000 out-of-home advertisements, such as placement on billboards, subway stations and buses, in three cities: Los Angeles and Philadelphia, which is where it has physical stores, plus in New York City. These generated 236 million impressions over six weeks, according to Figs.
- A kick-off event called “Arch to Arc” in New York City’s Washington Square Park, featuring the park’s arch to rev off of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. About 2,500 consumers attended this event.
The campaign generated 1 billion earned media impressions and helped spur their product collections to sell out in days or hours.
To share more about the campaign strategy and the long-term plan for Figs at the Olympics, Eaton sat down with Multichannel Marketer. Eaton joined Figs in February 2024 and previously served in executive marketing roles at Nike (head of brand marketing), Ralph Lauren (vice president, global brand marketing) and Under Armour (senior lead, global brand management.)
Multichannel Marketer: How did you guys receive this partnership?
Eaton: We have two co-founders, Heather Hasson and Trina Spear. Heather had a incredible friend who was affiliated with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic committee. It honestly was just a casual conversation of like, ‘Oh, well who outfits the team U.S.A. medical team for the games?’ And the answer was like, ‘I’m not sure, let’s go find out.’
Her friend came back to her and said, ‘No one, currently.’ There’s about 250 healthcare professionals that go to the games and they supply their own gear throughout the games.
And the second that Heather and then Trina heard that, they said, ‘Well, we absolutely need to change that.’ And so that really is how it came to be.
Multichannel Marketer: Tell me more about the product you designed for the games.
Eaton: We provided the 250 healthcare professionals with specially designed gear, really focused on enhancing their performance, high quality, functional, super comfortable.
They didn’t have products that were designed specifically for the work that they’re doing running on and off fields needing to have pocketing for their stethoscopes and equipment and things like that. It was really hot. So breathability and things like that were really important.
We have this really cool rollup bag. Oftentimes healthcare professionals have to run onto a field, they have a few seconds to take what they need and to be able to access it really easily. And so we created this really customized rollup bag that is easy to roll up, get all of your tools, your tape, your gauze, your things like that, and really easy open and closure based on the work that they’re doing.
Multichannel Marketer: Moving onto the marketing campaign, how long was that in the works?
Eaton: It really started with the product development. So that started about a year in advance of the 2024 summer Olympic games and Paralympic games. And then we started working in earnest once the product was in place on the marketing and the branding aspects in the spring of 2024. So it did come together quite quickly, but sometimes I think the best things do.
Multichannel Marketer: Why did you choose New York City for your brand-building activity?
Eaton: A few different reasons. One is, it has just a bustling healthcare community. Some of the leading institutions honestly in the world are right here in New York City, so it has a really highly saturated healthcare community presence.
Also, everyone’s commuting by foot and by public transit. It was a really good way to saturate the message and reach a lot of people in our healthcare community in a really kind of smaller space and get such a big breadth of impact out of it because we did so much on the subway.
If you just ride the subway in New York — I live in New York — you’ll just see healthcare professionals sitting on it in their Figs. And so it’s a very natural place to kind of showcase the brand because it’s part of the community and their day-to-day life in terms of how they go to work and start their shifts.
And then in addition to that, specifically our event was at Washington Square Park because there is the Washington Square Arch in the park and we sort of did it thematically to parallel the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Multichannel Marketer: Let’s talk about some of the the results and ROI from the campaign.
Eaton: We just saw really substantial demand for the product. Some items sold out in days, some even hours. It was really cool. Snoop Dogg wore our compression socks multiple times throughout the game. So obviously Snoop Dogg had such a presence at this year’s Olympics and he specifically requested the quote “doc socks,” so it was really cool to see him wearing the product and then also seeing our medical community really excited about that.
And so the product became really popular and then to be able to have it for purchase so people that were back stateside could support and celebrate the moment as well was really, really cool.
It was great to see those limited edition products do so well and they were so successful. That really is having a lasting halo effect across our brand and our offering. We also saw substantial brand impact with site traffic increasing and being able to really garner a lot of traction to the brand both across our social and site channels.
Multichannel Marketer: How does the demand that you had during the Olympic period compare to other peak shopping days, like Black Friday?
Eaton: This was really unique. We have certain moments that are very much brand led and they’re really focused on celebrating the community. And so for us it’s a little bit different in terms of looking at traffic for a moment like this versus traffic for promotion.
We had never really seen anything like this before. And what was so unique was specifically around our organic and direct traffic. So seeing people find out about the brand and then organically and directly visit the site, I think was where we really saw the biggest sort of jump in difference.
Multichannel Marketer: Do you have any stats about how many new customers did you acquire or is this something for people that already love the brand and wanted something special?
Eaton: It was both, honestly. For our current community, this was such a special way for them to come together and celebrate and be a part of this cultural moment. But the same time it was really cool to also expand into new areas. I mean obviously, most relevant is sports medicine and orthopedic surgery. We actually had an incredible orthopedic surgeon featured in our campaign. And just the growth and excitement within that specific area was really, really exciting to see.
Multichannel Marketer: How did the new customer that you acquired, how they differ from an average customer? Are you still seeing the impact of someone that you acquired during the Olympics now?
Eaton: For things like this, they’re definitely a long-term play. This was definitely really focused on the brand and really focused on showing up for the medical community. We always say, ‘We get you, we got you.’ And this was just another opportunity for us to spotlight them, show that we have their back, provide the physical product in the uniform, but then also celebrate and bring this incredible group together. When you show up in these ways, this is an impact that you continue to have for years and years to come.
Our partnership with the Olympics is a multi-year partnership, so we’re looking forward to the Milan Winter Olympics coming up and then also the Olympics in L.A. following that. You have to look at these things over a long period of time versus just looking at it for a couple of months or even a year out because it’s about how you continue to show up consistently and continue to show up for the community that you’re serving.
It really is twofold. Obviously, the media impact. You see this site surging with the traffic and you see new customers coming in, you see that organic traffic. But then longer term, its exciting to think about how you can continue to build relationships and also how you can continue to inspire the community and then specifically with this, that’s something we’ll see as we continue our partnership in the future.
Multichannel Marketer: Because you have this opportunity twice more, is there anything you’ll do differently from the marketing side, any lessons learned or challenges that you’re going to take into the next games?
Eaton: From a marketing standpoint, absolutely. What was so impactful to me was definitely these sort of IRL experiences. Like I said, we did the one in New York and then of course we had experiences in Paris as well, and we celebrated the medical team at the team U.S.A. house.
In this sort of post-COVID time period, people really value those experiences to come together. Oftentimes the medical community never before had there been a ceremony or an experience that sort of brought that entire community together to thank them and to appreciate the work that they’re doing. And so more things like that in terms of how we can physically show up for our community throughout the Olympics and Paralympic games is also something that I think we want to continue to enhance and do more of as we look to future initiatives.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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