How two athletes who'd never played badminton became the best argument for it.
For YONEXServices INFLUENCER, CONTENT, COMMUNITY
01
Campaign Concept
Badminton is the second-most-played sport in the world, and Yonex is the brand that owns it, but almost nobody in the U.S. knows either fact.
The 2026 US Open Badminton, held at Cal State Fullerton's Titan Gymnasium, gave Yonex USA a real event to build a story around.
The objective was specific: start to shift how Americans perceive the sport, and do it by telling Yonex's role in that sport naturally, not by talking at an audience that doesn't exist yet.
02
Content
district studio's answer was to align athletes with the innate power and grace of the sport.
Rather than recruit badminton influencers to speak to people who already care about badminton, the team activated two creators who had never played the sport competitively: tennis coach Simon Hegelund and multi-sport athlete Zenny Phantom.
Around two hero pieces, we built around a full week of programming.
02
Project Impact
9.3K engagements and 283K reach on a single Instagram Reel, the top-performing piece of the entire campaign
472.2K total reach across 24 pieces of content from 10 creators
21.6K total engagements at a 4.59% average engagement rate — nearly double Instagram's 2.5% benchmark
Reach
472.2K
Engagement
21.6k
What It Proved
The best-performing content in a U.S. badminton campaign came from two people who had never played badminton — proof that the fastest way to build an audience for a sport with no American audience yet is to borrow someone else's. Simon and Zenny didn't need to become badminton experts to make Yonex's case; they needed to be curious in a way their own followers already trusted. That's a repeatable playbook for Yonex USA, not a one-off: find the adjacent sport, find the creator who's earned the benefit of the doubt with that audience, and let the discovery do the selling.
