Opening Under Armour’s Brand Houses

Over the past three months, Pangolin has delivered two ‘smashing’ opening events for Under Armour’s new brand houses in Liverpool & Battersea Power Station.

The brief was from Under Armour simple. Pangolin was tasked with creatively executing two events that use the brand’s athlete partnerships to capture the media headlines and create buzz of the brand house opening amongst the local community. 

Liverpool

With Liverpool being its first one to open in the UK, we were tasked to plan a creative opening event execution using Under Armour athlete, Trent Alexander-Arnold.

Working closely with Under Armour, we created an event format that ensured the key objectives were exceeded. Leveraging the fame of Trent Alexander-Arnold we created a hero newsworthy moment, as the legendary footballer performed an impressive free kick to smash the store doors.

Following this, Trent engaged in an on-stage discussion with our event host, Josh Denzel, to dive into Liverpool’s sporting heritage and the importance of Under Armour opening its first brand house in the city. Giving back to the community, Under Armour invited the local charity Tiber Football Centre, to come down, meet Trent and ask their own questions in the panel.

Battersea

With the Liverpool event format being a winning formula to drive coverage, the Battersea Power Station brand house opening followed a similar suit, only this time the brand house also included Under Armour’s first UA Next Academy; a state-of-the-art testing facility that identifies, trains, and develops London’s young athletes and sports leaders of tomorrow. 

With the goal of driving awareness of both the new Battersea brand house and UA Next Academy, Under Armour athlete, Anthony Joshua kicked off the event with a punch to the glass doors which attracted crowds of people who had all come to witness the hero moment. Media and rising star athletes were then invited inside to listen to the boxer share his personal experiences in a panel discussion, before putting his skills to the ultimate test in the UA Next Academy testing area.

Together, the events show the success brand events can have when messaging is authentically embedded at every touchpoint throughout, bringing the brand story to life in an engaging and memorable way. They also show how when an event production is strategically planned to capture key media content, it can deliver a windfall of coverage.

Working closely with our small but mighty army of suppliers and partners, the end results were (quite literally!) a smash success.