How district studio turned Oars + Alps' Instagram from a giveaway machine into a home for athletes, and grew revenue from organic social by 162%
For Oars + AlpsServices INFLUENCER, CONTENT, COMMUNITY
Photo by Raymond Eugenio
01
The Brand
Oars + Alps makes clean, performance-minded skincare for men who spend their days moving: runners, cyclists, golfers, people who sweat. The brand already had a 36,000-follower Instagram, a deep product line and a marquee partner in Peloton instructor Matt Wilpers, its Chief Fitness Officer.
What it didn't have was a feed that sounded like the people who use the product. That's what brought it to district studio heading into 2024.
02
The Challenge
In June 2023 the account's best posts were all giveaways. A seven-day Father's Day gift guide pulled 938 engagements on a single post, most of them comments from people entering to win. Across 2023, giveaways made up 68% of every tagged message in the brand's inbox.
The attention was rented. After the Father's Day guide, the account lost more followers than it gained (net –23 in July 2023). The Holiday Gift Guide added 458 followers in November 2023, and 131 left in December. Without a prize attached, a typical post earned about 50 engagements. Oars + Alps was buying reach, then watching it walk away.
03
The Strategy
We bet that the audience would stay for people, not prizes. So we pulled giveaway content down 76% and put athletes and creators at the center of the feed: real runners, riders and golfers using the product in the middle of something hard.
Three choices shaped the work:
Pick creators for engagement, not follower count. Raymond Eugenio and the Sunday Runday LA crew got as much feed time as a Peloton star, because the people who follow them actually listen.
Show up for cultural moments. When an event already has the community talking, a brand that is there in real time gets pulled into the conversation.
Post less, make it better. Total output dropped 42% in the first half of 2024 while carousels rose 164%. Every post had to carry a story.
02
Project Impact
Oars + Alps no longer has to give things away to be heard. It now has a bench of athletes and creators, a library of stories that outlast the moment, and an audience that sticks around because it sees itself in the feed.
+162% revenue from organic social: $8,245 in the first half of 2024 vs. the previous six months
3.47% engagement rate across 44 creator and athlete posts, nearly 40% above the 2.5% Instagram benchmark (the same kind of content averaged 0.82% in 2023)
Half of all shares (215 of 422) came from creator and athlete posts, which made up a third of the feed
+92.7% net audience growth in the first half of 2024, with 76% less giveaway content
+1,122 net new Instagram followers from January to October 2024
5 of the top 6 posts by engagement, and 6 of 6 by impressions, featured an athlete or creator
