A winner at the 2024 Global Performance Marketing Awards for Best Performance PR Campaign, this case study recently featured on our Awin-Win Marketing Podcast and was profiled at Awin ThinkTank US.
Listen to the full story or scroll down for our write-up and video highlights.
About the advertiser
Tomahawk Shades is a US online sunglass company specializing in high-quality small batch eyewear. What began as a college project for brothers Ryan and Andrew Shapiro in 2012 has grown into an impressive direct-to-consumer brand enjoying huge popularity in sports circles.
Today’s Business is Tomahawk Shades’ digital marketing agency. They have a pivotal role in planning activities that aid brand awareness and sales.
The challenge
“We didn’t really know about this strategy. It wasn’t something we woke up and found out about… The one thing that’s allowed us to take this approach is being able to work with so many different people… It’s a big industry and we have to find a way to compete.”
Andrew Shapiro, CEO and Founder, Tomahawk Shades
Pre-2023, marketing was a lot simpler for Tomahawk. Its gifting strategy had proven alarmingly consistent in putting its product in the hands of influencers and, usually, straight onto their social feeds.
Major names in golf, baseball and lacrosse had even worn their free Tomahawk sunglasses during televised sporting events – an added bonus to selling athlete accessories.
But as Tomahawk’s star grew, so did the athletes’ demands.
Escalating flat fees put a ceiling on Tomahawk’s influencer strategy as the financial risks made it unfeasible for a brand of its size. A meeting between Today’s Business and one of golf’s most-followed athletes confirmed this. The cost of a single post to their four-million Instagram followers was quoted at around a month’s worth of sales.
Rather than accept defeat, Today’s Business devised a PR opportunity that only affiliate marketing could unlock.
The solution
“If you’re one of the biggest golfers and golf is worldwide – everyone loves it – you have agents, and you want to get paid x amount of dollars. We presented it to say, here’s complete freedom to do what you want, how you want it and just enjoy it. Make the content you want to make.”
Andrew Shapiro, CEO and Founder, Tomahawk Shades
Aware of the athlete’s ambition to start their own sunglass company, Today’s Business framed an affiliate partnership as exactly that.
The proposal was to create a profitable side business promoting Tomahawk to their millions of followers. If successful, affiliate marketing would deliver a similar level of income without the golfer having to spend the next few months creating a business plan, testing pairs of sunglasses and inspecting warehouses.
Today’s Business used Awin’s platform to set up a custom influencer partnership, factoring in:
- High earnings: A sizeable CPA was combined with conversion rates and Tomahawk’s average order value to deliver an attractive proposal.
- Creative control: The influencer had complete autonomy when it came to what, where and when content was posted – a major advantage for affiliate over the creatively restrictive flat-fee arrangements.
- Special permissions: Exclusive ‘always credit’ voucher codes were shared to honor all sales. Audiences also had plenty of time to consider their options, courtesy of Awin’s 30-day cookie.
- Personalized user journeys: Today’s Business worked with Tomahawk to trigger overlays for traffic from the golfer’s posts, often pushing email sign-ups to deliver a long-term benefit.
The custom arrangement and user journey greatly appealed to Tomahawk’s new influencer and was even used as a blueprint for recruiting athletes following the brand’s success with the golfer.
The results
“I mean I would probably spend hours per day just DMing people asking them to do it [promote Tomahawk]. It’s kind of flip-flopped now, where now it’s coming to us. You wake up every day to a bunch of DMs from people saying, ‘Hey, I would love to do this, or do this or work with you’.”
Andrew Shapiro, CEO and Founder, Tomahawk Shades
Every post would have represented a success for Today’s Business and its no-risk influencer play. As it happened, the golfer took the initiative and embedded Tomahawk into their content schedule.
From breakdowns of gift guides at Sports Illustrated to entire articles at Brobible.com, gold-standard backlinks and coverage followed many of the posts. In one six-month period, Tomahawk saw:
- A 300% increase in monthly site traffic
- Over 15,000 new email subscribers
- Over 5,000 new Instagram followers
In the affiliate channel, Tomahawk and Today’s Business knew they’d found an effective and safe route back into influencer marketing. The resulting buzz around their work meant the pair was soon overwhelmed by requests from other athletes wanting to promote the brand. That journey has come with plenty of valuable learnings around results, agreements and selectivity.
Now able to passively and actively recruit top-level athletes, the ongoing plan is to further explore the appeal of affiliate-based influencer marketing in new sports and test whether micro-influencers perform better than household names.
