At 20 years old, Beyond Yoga — the activewear brand acquired by Levi’s in 2021 — is ready to reintroduce itself. To do so, it’s launching a new campaign platform called “Seek Beyond,” led by its first-ever celebrity partner: actor, writer, producer and director Issa Rae. Rae penned and voiced the campaign’s “anthem,” a spoken-word audio track that scores its hero video. She also stars in the campaign, which launched Thursday morning.
“We’ve built this fandom and strong customer base. [Now, we’re asking,] ‘What’s next?’ ‘What do we stand for?’ ‘What do the next 20 years look like for us?'” said Katie Babineau, Beyond Yoga’s CMO, speaking to the impetus for the campaign. It’s a pivotal year for Beyond Yoga: The brand plans to open six more stores by the end of 2025, which will bring its total store count to 14.
To stand out in the crowded athleisure market — which Grand View Research projects will grow from $101.91 billion in 2023 to $190.68 billion by 2030 — Babineau said the team focused on distinctive storytelling. “There’s a lot of story[telling] around perfection and performance. … Our customer was feeling a bit exhausted by that story and the aspirational, picture-perfect aesthetic. [They wanted] the opportunity to fail,” she said. “We felt like: What a great opportunity for us to show up differently and start to shape a world that allows people to just enjoy the journey and gives them permission to fail.”
The campaign’s activation is multifaceted. Rae will share social content and invite followers to post their own content around how they define what it means to “Seek Beyond.” A long-standing group of Beyond Yoga collaborators is also featured in the campaign imagery. They include fitness entrepreneur and founder of The Sculpt Society, Megan Roup (557,000 Instagram followers); Sky Ting Yoga co-founder Krissy Jones (26,000 Instagram followers); Hike Clerb founder Evelynn Escobar (38,000 Instagram followers); Big Girls Who Run LA co-founder Danielle Burnett (107,000 Instagram followers); runner and model Dale Samson (11,000 Instagram followers); and breathwork coach Miwa Sakamoto (3,300 Instagram followers).
The campaign coincides with the launch of Beyond Yoga’s new Outdoors collection, designed to show that the versatility behind its best-selling super-soft Spacedye sets can extend to other areas of customers’ wardrobes. “We want to serve [our] customer with a product that can take them from a hike to brunch to dinner,” Babineau said. She pointed to the new $118 Peak Pant, a cargo-style pant, as an example.
In early August, the brand will host its first-ever brand trip, in partnership with Visit California. The itinerary includes a hot air balloon ride, river kayaking and a winery tasting. The guest list includes longtime partners as well as creators it hopes to build relationships with, including Gym Tan (@californiaistoocasual; 364,000 Instagram followers), Lynn Shabinsky (@whitehairwisdom, 1 million Instagram followers) and several couples, though the brand declined to provide specifics. These couples will also serve to organically bring men into the fold as the brand increases its focus on its men’s offerings this year.
One of the goals for the trip, Katie Marylander, Beyond Yoga’s director of social media and community, said, is to inspire not just the brand’s existing followers, but also the broader communities that follow the creators joining them, who may not be familiar with the brand. “We don’t want to stay in an echo chamber,” she said. “We want to reach the people who follow these creators, so they see us and think, ‘Oh, I can participate IRL, too,’ at Club Beyond events,” she said, referencing the brand’s community event series, which will pick up in multiple cities this fall.
Marylander’s hope is that people will use Rae’s “anthem” — the voiceover that runs alongside the brand’s campaign video — as a sound in their own content. “Hopefully the call to action comes across, [which is asking the audience], ‘What does ‘Seek Beyond’ mean to you?’ ‘What does wellness mean to you?’ ‘How do you find joy in your day?’ I hope the audio can inspire people,” she said. “You can’t force a trend. You can just do your best to put all the pieces in play, and hope people are inspired to use it and add it to their posts.”
In the minute-long anthem, Rae’s voice declares: “Not a single second has ever been wasted on joy. … Lean into the moments that stretch you to grow. Or don’t! It’s all up to you. Take the time you deserve, and maybe it’ll be uncomfortable at first, but there will never be a better time than right now.”
To that end, the brand seeded Seek Beyond mailers to 75 influencers, inclusive of Sony headphones, the new Outdoors collection and a QR code that queued up the anthem video, so they could have an immersive experience right away, Marylander said. It has tapped 30 creators for paid partnerships — some will highlight unboxings of the mailer. Partners tapped include Tayshia Adams (@tayshia, 1.3 million Instagram followers), Alexandra May (@alexmichaelmay; 159,000 Instagram followers) and Sara Walker (@styledsara; 134,000 Instagram followers).
In addition to its influencer marketing efforts, the brand is also making its largest-ever investment in CTV, with ads running on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, MAX, AMC, Bravo and Peacock. It’s also making its first investment in podcast advertising, on popular podcasts including Mel Robbins’s “The Mel Robbins Podcast,” Alex Cooper’s “Call Her Daddy” and Nick Viall’s “The Viall Files.”
