New Balance Film & Media Tie-Up Turns Highsnobiety All Grey For Sportswear Brand’s ‘Grey Day 2023’

Like Nike’s ‘Air Max Day’ and Amazon’s ‘Black Friday’, each year New Balance declares 12 May as ‘Grey Day’. The Boston-based sportswear brand annually dedicates one day in May to celebrate and honour the signature colour that it has become known for worldwide. 

 

To mark this special day in the sportswear brand’s own calendar, annually New Balance  unveils and curates various fresh grey silhouettes to keep the legacy colour at the centre of the brand conversation and position and its 2023 initiative was spearheaded by a hero film. Titled ‘MADE in USA | Grey Day 2023’, the anchor spot dropped on 5 May ahead of the annual grey day itself.

 

Running across its digital and social platforms, the video states: “The 990. It’s about creating something phenomenal. ​​This year we celebrate our brand heritage and ‘Grey Day’ through a limited edition ‘Made in USA’ pack available in select markets May 12^th’.

 

 

An inventive supporting strand of ‘Grey Day’ 2023 was a partnership with global fashion and lifestyle media brand Highsnobiety and with creative media agency Mediahub which saw New Balance turn the global Highsnobiety digital platform ‘grey’. 

 

To celebrate ‘Grey Day 2023’, Highsnobiety switched its entire homepage, logo and social handles grey, while it also published a story about New Balance’s associations the colour grey and how this hue has remained key to the brand to this very day.

 

The partnership initiative marked the first time that Highnobiety had allowed a brand to take over its global platform in such a ‘disruptive way’.

 

“The colour Grey shows up through every part of the New Balance brand, be it lifestyle, running or into performance shoes and apparel,” explained Mediahub’s New Balance Client Partner Suri Patel. “This year we are incredibly proud to tell the world what Grey Day stands for with the support of a cultural tastemaker brand that is Highsnobiety, and our clients who enable us to be challenging and bold in the work we do all over the world.”

 

Highsnobiety VP of Brand Energy Hendrik Juergens added: “It’s very rare for a brand to almost entirely own a “colorway”. New Balance effortlessly claims the “color” grey and can rightfully celebrate Grey Day as their moment to simultaneously honor the brand’s past and to point towards its future. Highsnobiety is all about the brands and communities from its cultural surrounding, which develop and stick to their own codes. Grey is significantly New Balance, and we’re excited about the grey Grey Day takeover of our channels.”

 

 

Comment

 

With its roots dating back to the foundation in Boston of the New Balance Arch Support Company in 1906, it was in the 1930s that the company established itself in the sports space as the New Balance Athletic Shoe Company when baseball players and track and field athletes began wearing the company’s specialty footwear.

 

But it was in the late 1970s and 1980s – amidst the booming consumerist culture symbolised by Reagan and Thatcher, chunky phones, big hair and spandex that the mass running phenomenon began. Whilst most brands chose to leverage the era by rolling out expensive neon sneakers, New Balance went against the grain and favoured a signature subtle grey tone. 

 

The idea was that the brand was providing a solution for the new breed of urban runner who’s bright and white trainers were quickly ruined by the dirty city streets, while its durable, grey suede shoes offered durability whilst matching the colour of the urban environment.

 

‘Grey Day’ or ‘Nike Air Max Day’ or just any other day….you decide!