The Famous Q&A with ~ Noel Mack

Noel Mack is Chief Brand Officer at Gymshark, where he leads global brand marketing, creative and cultural strategy.

Known for his bold, community-first approach, Noel has helped transform Gymshark from a Birmingham garage start-up into a billion-dollar global brand, championing creativity, cultural relevance and an uncompromising commitment to gym culture.

Gymshark has launched a campaign with Megan Thee Stallion. How did that come about and what were the challenges?

We’ve always said we do gym. Not sport, not athleisure, not a bit of everything. Gym.

So when you look at Megan, the fit is pretty obvious. She’s been documenting her training for years. The discipline, the hard work, the days she doesn’t fancy it but shows up anyway. She’s a true gym girl who happens to be one of the biggest artists in the world.

That was the opportunity. Not to take a celebrity and put her in some gym clothes, but to take someone who already represents so much of what we believe in and give her a platform to do it on an enormous scale.

The challenge with a partnership of this size is making sure you don’t lose yourself in the celebrity of it all. It still has to feel like Gymshark. It still has to be about the gym.

The campaign, shot by Jack Bridgland, is unapologetically Megan and Gymshark. Women lifting heavy, flexing, taking up space and wearing whatever the hell they want.

And then, of course, the internet got involved. The campaign landed in the middle of a rather lively conversation about women’s gym shorts, and our community made the connection immediately.

But the best bit hasn’t been anything we’ve said. It’s been what they’ve said. That’s always the bit I’m most interested in.

What’s exciting you most in your role right now?

We’re at a really interesting point where the brand is getting bigger, but we’re getting more focused. Usually those two things don’t go together.

We’ve gone from being a business that sold gym clothes through Shopify to having a flagship store in Manhattan, wholesale partnerships and an increasingly global audience.

The game we’re playing has changed enormously. But the mission hasn’t. We still want to be the best gym brand in the world.

What excites me is finding new ways to express that without losing the thing that made us special in the first place.

Megan is a great example. It’s probably one of the biggest cultural partnerships we’ve ever done, but fundamentally, it’s still about someone who loves going to the gym.

What’s something Gymshark does that a traditional marketing department would probably talk itself out of?

Turning down money.

We had a product that our community absolutely loved, Onyx. People queued around the block for it. We had another drop planned, the stock was in the warehouse, everything was ready.

And I said we shouldn’t launch it. Not because it wouldn’t sell. Because it would. We were in danger of making something special less special.

We’ve also pulled products that weren’t good enough, despite having a lot of stock, and cancelled an entire product drop when bots bought up the inventory before genuine customers could get their hands on it. Those aren’t particularly popular decisions in the short term.

But we’re not building Gymshark for the next quarterly earnings call. We’re trying to build something that will still matter in 100 years.

How do you spot the difference between a trend Gymshark should jump on and one it should leave alone?

I ask whether it’s changing gym culture or whether it’s just something that’s fashionable this week.

Five years ago, I probably would have told you Gymshark would never do running. Gym people lifted weights. Runners ran. They were two different worlds.

Then hybrid athletes emerged. Suddenly the people who were lifting heavy were also running marathons.

That’s an evolution of our community, so of course we evolve with them. Same with reformer Pilates. When strength became a much bigger part of that world, it became more relevant to us.

But just because somebody wears Gymshark to play padel doesn’t mean we need a padel campaign.

There’s a difference between following your customer and chasing everything your customer does.

What’s the last conversation with a Gymshark customer that changed your thinking?

The conversations that interest me most aren’t necessarily the ones happening directly with us.

They’re the ones happening between customers when they don’t think the brand is listening.

If you gave me a choice between a hundred-page brand awareness study and a report of what people are actually saying about Gymshark on TikTok, I’d take the TikTok comments ten times out of ten. The reaction to Megan Does Gym is a brilliant example.

People weren’t just talking about a celebrity partnership. They were talking about what it represented, about women getting stronger, about wearing what they want, and about seeing themselves in the campaign. That’s when you know something has connected.

What’s the best piece of career advice you ever received?

Someone who was more junior than me once said, “Telling people who you aren’t is as important as telling them who you are.” I thought it was brilliant.

Everyone talks about defining what their brand stands for. Very few are willing to define what it doesn’t stand for.

A brand you admire from afar — and why?

Birkenstock. I love brands that know exactly what they are and have the discipline to stay there.

Imagine how many times over the years someone at Birkenstock must have suggested making trainers, heels or whatever else was selling particularly well that season.

But the brand has remained remarkably committed to what it does. There’s something incredibly powerful about that.

You don’t have to be everything to everyone. In fact, I’d argue that’s usually where the trouble starts.

What’s one thing great agencies do that average ones don’t?

They know what to leave out.

Most people can come up with a good idea. The difficult bit is recognising which ideas actually deserve to exist.

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