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New Balance Bets on Culture With We Got Now
New Balance's We Got Now is a 60-second global brand film, created by VMLY&R and launched in June 2022, that unites NBA champion Kawhi Leonard, South Korean singer-songwriter IU, England footballers Raheem Sterling and Bukayo Saka, and Grammy-nominated artist Jack Harlow to celebrate authentic creative joy across sport, music and lifestyle.
The campaign launched on June 9 and 10, 2022, simultaneously across NewBalance.com, social media channels, television, streaming platforms, out-of-home placements and digital display, with primary markets spanning the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as broader reach into APAC and North America. Each of the five featured figures represents a distinct cultural territory: professional basketball, K-pop, Premier League football, and contemporary hip-hop. The strategic logic is deliberate rather than decorative. By placing these ambassadors in unguarded, everyday moments rather than staged competitive arenas, the campaign makes a specific argument about what New Balance stands for in 2022.
The film's structure relies on a series of vignettes, each dedicated to a single ambassador doing what they love in an environment authentic to them. Chris Davis, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President of Merchandising at New Balance, articulated the intent in an official New Balance Japan news release dated July 4, 2022: "New Balance is challenging itself through the 'We Got Now' campaign to bring ambassadors, athletes and fans together in fun and meaningful ways. When there is the freedom to play in an authentic environment to you, there is an energy that is released by moving your body, showing off your skills and doing what you really love, whatever that may be." The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100, reflecting strong cultural ambition and broad ambassador reach anchored in credible creative execution.
New Balance positions We Got Now as a platform that sits at the crossroads of sport and contemporary culture. The brand's strategic rationale is rooted in a long-running effort to move beyond pure athletic performance marketing and claim relevance in fashion and lifestyle conversations, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States, where streetwear and sportswear audiences increasingly overlap.
This positioning did not emerge in isolation. According to designyourway.net and campaignlive.co.uk, New Balance had been building a brand narrative of independence since 2018, when it introduced its "Fearlessly Independent Since 1906" platform in partnership with VML, emphasising Boston heritage and a deliberate distance from the conventions of larger sportswear competitors. By 2019, per adland.tv, the brand was running copy lines such as "Worn by supermodels in London and dads in Ohio" to promote its 990 silhouette, consciously reframing a perceived weakness as cross-generational fashion credibility. We Got Now is the logical continuation of that arc, replacing wit with warmth and scaling the ambassador roster into genuinely global cultural territory.
The competitive context makes the strategy legible. Nike held approximately 35.2 percent of global sports-footwear market share in 2022, according to News Market Us, while Adidas held approximately 15.5 percent of the same market, per the same source. New Balance operates in the space between those two dominant players, and We Got Now is calibrated to compete on cultural resonance rather than scale. The choice of IU as an ambassador signals deliberate reach into APAC audiences beyond the United Kingdom and United States core, reflecting the campaign's three-continent production footprint spanning Los Angeles, London, Manchester and Seoul, as reported by Marketing Interactive. The global athletic footwear market stood at approximately 130 billion dollars in 2022 with an annual growth rate of around five percent, according to a planning consensus across Grand View Research and techsciresearch.com, underscoring the scale of the category New Balance is competing in.
The We Got Now film runs at precisely 60 seconds and is structured as three discrete vignettes, each built around a single ambassador and their relationship with their craft in an everyday setting. Production took place across four cities on three continents: Los Angeles, London, Manchester and Seoul, according to marketing-interactive.com. That geographic spread is not incidental. It mirrors the campaign's ambassador roster and reinforces the argument that the "now" New Balance is celebrating is genuinely plural and global rather than a single cultural reference point projected outward.
Each vignette is designed to show the featured figure doing what they love in a context that feels specific to them rather than generic. Kawhi Leonard appears in a basketball setting rooted in his own physicality and quiet intensity. IU is presented within a creative register authentic to her musical identity, a deliberate acknowledgement of the K-pop and wider Korean cultural moment that had become a significant commercial and creative force by 2022. Raheem Sterling and Bukayo Saka, both England internationals at the time of production, bring the campaign into direct contact with Premier League football culture in the United Kingdom. Jack Harlow, whose Grammy nomination underscored his standing in US hip-hop, completes the five-part ensemble.
The campaign was submitted to the Clapboard archive by Billi Hatfield, Associate Director of Communications at VML, confirming the agency's direct creative involvement. According to Firstclasse Com My and marketech-apac.com, VMLY&R handled the creative production across the campaign's full distribution scope, including television, streaming, digital and out-of-home executions. The New Balance 9060 silhouette is featured within the film, per marketech-apac.com, grounding the creative in a specific product moment without allowing it to become a product advertisement. The result is a film that functions as a brand manifesto dressed in the aesthetic language of contemporary lifestyle content.
We Got Now generated 66,727,595 views, 5,970 likes and 195 comments on the campaign's primary video archive, as recorded in the Clapboard platform's campaign record. These figures represent documented public engagement with a single 60-second film across its archived distribution window and point to substantial organic reach for a brand that competes without the media investment scale of Nike or Adidas.
No independently verified third-party performance audit for the full campaign, including paid media reach, conversion data or brand-lift metrics, is publicly available. What the structural evidence does confirm is that the distribution strategy, spanning television, streaming, social media, digital display and out-of-home simultaneously across the United Kingdom and the United States, was built to maximise sequential exposure across audience touchpoints rather than concentrate investment in any single channel, as reported by marketing-interactive.com and campaignlive.co.uk.
The five-ambassador model carries inherent efficiency. Each of Kawhi Leonard, IU, Raheem Sterling, Bukayo Saka and Jack Harlow brings an existing audience that does not fully overlap with the others, meaning the campaign's effective reach across sport, fashion and lifestyle audiences in the United Kingdom, United States and APAC markets is structurally greater than a single-talent campaign of comparable production cost. According to marketech-apac.com, the campaign represented a continuation of New Balance's ongoing investment in the We Got Now platform through 2022, suggesting the brand treated this film as a long-form brand asset rather than a short-cycle promotional activation. The Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100 reflects that assessment: strong creative intent and demonstrable reach, with room to deepen measurable cultural impact.
New Balance's We Got Now features five ambassadors: NBA champion Kawhi Leonard, South Korean singer-songwriter IU, England footballers Raheem Sterling and Bukayo Saka, and Grammy-nominated hip-hop artist Jack Harlow. Each represents a distinct cultural territory spanning basketball, K-pop, Premier League football and contemporary music, as confirmed in the Clapboard campaign record.
New Balance launched We Got Now on June 9 and 10, 2022, simultaneously across NewBalance.com, social media, television, streaming, out-of-home and digital display. Primary markets were the United Kingdom and the United States, with production spanning Los Angeles, London, Manchester and Seoul across three continents, according to marketing-interactive.com.
VMLY&R created the We Got Now campaign for New Balance in 2022. The campaign was submitted to the Clapboard archive by Billi Hatfield, Associate Director of Communications at VML. VMLY&R handled creative production across television, streaming, digital and out-of-home executions in the United Kingdom, United States and beyond, per marketech-apac.com.
We Got Now is a 60-second film structured as three vignettes, each showing an ambassador doing what they love in an everyday setting rather than a competitive arena. New Balance CMO Chris Davis described the intent as releasing authentic energy through freedom of movement and craft, as stated in a New Balance Japan official news release dated July 4, 2022.
We Got Now extends a brand narrative New Balance began building in 2018 with the "Fearlessly Independent Since 1906" platform, per designyourway.net and campaignlive.co.uk. The 2022 campaign scales that independence positioning into global cultural territory, connecting sport, fashion and lifestyle across the United Kingdom, United States and APAC through a five-ambassador ensemble strategy.
New Balance's We Got Now received a Clapboard Score of 72 out of 100. The score reflects strong cultural ambition, a broad and credible ambassador roster spanning sport and entertainment, and demonstrable reach across the United Kingdom and United States markets, balanced against the absence of publicly verified third-party performance or brand-lift data for the campaign.
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