In partnership with Tracksuit. Data provided by Tracksuit; interview and analysis led independently by THE GOODS.
Let’s get something clear: I’m not a 10K-before-sunrise type. I don’t foam-roll religiously. But I do cycle most mornings along the Tagus. A Brompton, not a carbon-fibre beast. No Lycra. Just trail shoes from ASICS that make for excellent pedal grip, and a Garmin strapped on for good measure. A flat white at Neighbourhood Café on the way home seals the ritual.
The ASICS Campaign That Got Me Cycling Again
What nudged me back on the saddle? ASICS’ 2024 “New Personal Best” campaign. It inspired me to take my bike with me for a three month work trip and to see family in Antigua.
I cycle for clarity.
And whatever your movement of choice, run, ride, stretch, the physical and mental benefits are non-negotiable. As Stanford’s Allan Reiss told National Geographic, “Exercise, no matter your age, is the single best thing you can do for every organ in your body, including your brain.”
Everyone has that brand they swear by. The one that fits right. Feels right. Sometimes for aesthetic reasons; price, but often for deeper ones.
My own ASICS moment wasn’t sparked by a viral ad. I injured my knee. My physio glanced at my shoes and said, “That’s your problem.” After treating the injury, he prescribed ASICS Nimbus with custom insoles. I listened. The pain eased. My posture shifted. I walked without noticing. It wasn’t sexy. It was smart.
And that’s kind of the point. ASICS has earned loyalty through function. Their product language (overpronation, underpronation, neutral) makes choosing a shoe feel less like roulette and more like science. Few sports brands do this well.
The brand was born in the rubble of postwar Japan. In 1949, Kihachiro Onitsuka-san founded what would become ASICS in Kobe, guided by a Latin ethos: Anima Sana In Corpore Sano—a sound mind in a sound body. It wasn’t a tagline. It was a blueprint.
It still is.
ASICS Hype Hits Differently
According to Tracksuit data, ASICS continues to outperform competitor averages in both Awareness and Consideration in the UK. While the brand is trusted by many, preference scores, particularly among younger consumers, highlight a key area of future opportunity. It’s this evolution from trusted to chosen that sits at the heart of ASICS' strategic focus.
The message is landing. But what’s more interesting is how it's being carried by ASICS across social, internal policy, product launches, agency briefs. Everyone from interns to HR to marketers and agency partners seem to move in sync. Few brand teams are this orchestrated. They just seem to get it. And if you don’t get what I'm talking about just start following their activity on LinkedIn.
Brand Archetype: Hero, Ruler, Caregiver Brand?
So, I sat down with someone who lives it. Gary Raucher, Global Head of Marketing, Executive Board Member at ASICS.
No pre-approved talking points. No PR fluff. Just a conversation about clarity, conviction, the honest fight for work-life balance as a global marketer and what it takes to build a brand that resists the noise.
But what is Raucher’s internal filter for what’s right for the brand? Gary's response hits purpose, brand DNA, archetypes, and consumer empathy. “A brand finds its fruit in its roots. That’s our filter. We always return to why we were founded.
Our founder, Onitsuka-san, looked around and saw a generation of young people in Japan who had lost hope. He believed movement could help rebuild them physically, yes, but more importantly, mentally. That belief became our foundation: Anima Sana in Corpore Sano—a sound mind in a sound body.”
Raucher continues, “Seventy-five years later, that mission hasn’t changed. Everything we do begins with physical movement, but the goal is mental uplift. If something we’re planning adds pressure or stress, it doesn’t belong. If it encourages people to move and feel better? Then we’re on the right path.”
He says, “We’ve also thought deeply about our brand archetype. Most sports brands lean into the Ruler — ‘win at all costs’ — or the Hero — ‘one day you’ll be a winner if you work hard enough.’ We’re neither.
ASICS is a Caregiver brand. We care about performance, but not at the expense of wellbeing. Our athletes want to win, and we support that, but their mental and physical health comes first. Every campaign, every product, every piece of messaging goes through that lens.”
From Trusted to Chosen
Tracksuit’s data cited earlier shows ASICS’ long-standing brand ethos Sound Mind, Sound Body has contributed to above-average awareness and consideration in key markets like the US and UK. This suggests the brand’s messaging has penetrated the market effectively.
However, an opportunity remains in preference and conversion, particularly among younger consumers. While 39% of consumers aware of ASICS describe it as “a brand I trust,” 29% feel it is “for people like me.” This disconnect is more pronounced in the 18–34 demographic, where preference rates remain at 6%, despite moderate levels of brand awareness.
This represents a strategic opportunity: to evolve ASICS’ value proposition from one that is trusted to one that is personally relevant. In a category where emotional alignment increasingly drives consumer behaviour, closing this gap will be essential for long-term brand growth, especially as younger consumers gain share in the market.
And on that point, what does ASICS track most closely when it comes to brand health?
Raucher is realistic, “We’ve got a clear ambition: to become the most preferred performance sports brand in the world. ASICS has always been well known, but not necessarily well loved. Awareness isn’t the issue. The real challenge is giving people enough reasons to choose us over the competition."
To illustrate Raucher’s point, here’s how ASICS stacks up against key players in the UK running shoe category, according to recent data from Tracksuit.
Raucher says, "That’s why brand preference is the single most important metric we track. It tells us whether people not only recognise the brand but actually want it in their lives.
From there, two things matter most. First, the quality and performance of our product. Second, the uniqueness of our philosophy—Sound Mind, Sound Body. So in addition to preference, we also look at whether ASICS is seen as innovative, and whether we’re known for supporting mental wellbeing.
If we’re delivering on both, strong product and meaningful purpose, we believe preference will follow.”
How ASICS Avoids Trend Chasing
But what kind of restraint does it take for Gary, the team, agency partners, to keep from chasing the next big thing?
“I think there are two ways to answer that,” he says. “There’s a strategic way, and then there’s more of an executional way.”
He starts with the strategy.
“We always say that for a brand positioning to really work, it needs to hit three things: it has to be relevant, it has to be credible, and it has to be differentiating. And for us, that credible bit is what anchors us.”
That credibility acts as a filter. Just because something is trending, or “the shiny new thing everyone’s chasing,” as he puts it, doesn’t mean it’s right for ASICS.
“If it’s not authentic, if it’s not true to who we are or the role we play in this industry, then it’s just not the right thing to do.”
Addressing the execution Raucher continues, “There’s actually a tremendous runway for creative ideas. But what we’re really trying to do is tell the same story again and again and again but in new, creative, innovative ways.”
That repetition isn’t a limitation. It’s a discipline. “We might think internally, okay, we’ve heard this story before, shouldn’t we be doing something new? But externally, for consumers, most people are hearing it for the first time.”
He pauses, “The strongest brands in the world…They've been telling the same story for decades. Sometimes even over a hundred years.”
Advertising as a Caregiver Brand: Making Movement Personal
And one thing that strikes me about ASICS is that the campaigns are based on, yes, movement, the science of movement (backed by the likes of Dr. Brennan Stubbs of King's College London) and the involvement of a good cause.
One of the most effective recent campaigns and Raucher’s personal favourite is ‘Desk Break’ with Brian Cox. Launched ahead of World Mental Health Day in 2024, the campaign turned the spotlight away from running shoes and towards desk jobs. The question hit hard: what is constant sitting doing to our minds? The answer: a lot more harm than we think.
ASICS’ scientific research revealed mental wellbeing begins to decline after two hours of continuous sitting, but just 15 minutes and 9 seconds of movement can reverse it. So ASICS responded not with a slogan, but a structural solution: it introduced a formal “Desk Break” clause into its own internal work culture, and challenged other companies to do the same.
It wasn’t a campaign about a product. It was about permission. To move. To reset. Wellbeing. The sort of brand behaviour that doesn’t just sell shoes, it sells trust; the precise marker the brand is aiming to increase.
And the effectiveness was escalated by the invitation to get involved. Taking social as an example, ASICS invited us all to ‘Join the #DeskBreak social challenge.
They said, “Take a 15-minute Desk Break and share an image of your empty desk with #DeskBreak. Every image shared will raise funds for mental health charities around the world.’
“We also did a campaign called Dramatic Transformations,” Gary says. “It showed before and after photos of people who had exercised for just 15 minutes. Not to show a six-pack, but to show that the most dramatic transformations aren’t visible. They happen in the mind.”
Together, The Desk Break and Dramatic Transformations showed how ASICS could bring its Sound Mind, Sound Body philosophy to life.
“Those two really cut through the clutter,” he says. “They got people sharing. They had personal engagement. And for me, that’s always the mark of a really good campaign, when it makes a societal impact.”
It’s the emotionally anchored campaigns, the ones that give people language for how they feel, that seem to hold the most weight.
“We believe anyone should be able to achieve a sound mind and a sound body,” Gary says. “It doesn’t matter what your fitness level is. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never played a sport in your life.”
That’s what made Dramatic Transformations so powerful for him.
“We wanted to show normal people, feeling a little bit better. That glow, that little lift, that’s what matters.”
And we’ll never know how many people actually have continued to add the desk break into their lives and consistently go beyond the 15 minutes and 9 seconds mark. How many continue swapping a dopamine scroll for a walk. Or took that first step towards feeling like themselves again.
But what we do know is that the best kind of advertising doesn’t look like advertising at all.
On Work-Life Balance as a Global Brand Leader
Now, we briefly touched on ASICS making changes internally based on the desk break research. And internal culture goes a long way to forge the type of brand leader we are. Gary holds a seat on the board at ASICS. A global marketer, he’s working across timezones and cultures.
So how does a global marketer adopt the ASICS mantra in his business and personal life?
"Sound Mind, Sound Body" sounds great on paper. But what does that actually look like when your calendar starts (figuratively speaking) in Tokyo and ends in Los Angeles?
“It’s hard,” Gary says. “Finding the right balance between my personal and professional life is still difficult. Especially when you’re managing multiple time zones.”
Perhaps you’re reading this and nodding. Your 9am is someone else’s midnight. And if you’re not careful, your workday never really ends, it just changes continents.
He continues, “You could be on 24/7 if you let it happen. That’s why I make sure to schedule in the things that give me energy. Without that, it’s just back-to-back Zoom calls until you forget what your own voice sounds like.”
And this level of awareness takes effort. Raucher says, “I’m taking my son to Athens next week. Just the two of us.”
He’s got two children, and while family trips are a regular thing, this one is to focus on the father-son bond.
“As much as I love doing things all together, the conversations you have one-on-one, those are different. So sometimes my wife and I each take one of the kids and do something just the two of us. This time, it’s my son and me.”
And when the pressure’s high and the decisions stack up, what grounds Raucher, what really resets him is a tennis court.
“Tennis is my thing,” he says. “Doesn’t matter how tired I am, how stressed, I always feel better afterwards.”
He plays once a week or more when the calendar grants him space. And it’s not just him. Gary sees the shift in his teenage children too.
“They’re under so much pressure: School, social media, everything. But when they move, they forget all that. You can see the change. They’re lighter.”
Raucher continues, “Sound Mind, Sound Body is a philosophy that we all believe in passionately. We have tried to incorporate more physical activities into our family holidays. When the kids were young, we often spent time "relaxing" by a pool or beach. As they've gotten older, however, we've realized that the ultimate form of relaxation is spending time being active in the mountains.”
So yes, he believes in the brand line. Deeply. When you move your body, you move your mind. It’s not just a platform. It’s how he lives and encourages his family to do likewise.
And when perspective is needed he finds it at home. “My wife is probably my wisest advisor,” he says, the kind of certainty that sounds earned, not rehearsed. “She’s a psychologist. She helps me see what’s really going on, not just the surface-level issue, but how I’m showing up in it.”
Leading Across Cultures With Clarity
By the time Gary Raucher joined ASICS in 2019, he had already held global roles at Philips, TomTom, and built an agency. He knew international business. But he didn’t yet know Japan.
“Working for a Japanese company is very different,” he says. “I’ve been in global roles for years, but usually for American or European companies.”
In past roles, Raucher would enter a meeting with options, pros and cons, a recommendation and expect a decision. In Japan, the meeting isn’t where consensus is built. It is where alignment is confirmed.
“You speak with all the individual stakeholders beforehand,” he explains. “By the time you’re in the room, the direction has already been agreed.”
It isn’t about giving up control. It is about earning trust differently through patience, pre-alignment, and respect for process. “There’s a high degree of trust that needs to be built,” he adds. “And that trust starts long before the meeting does.”
So, what’s the moment he braces for in a global alignment meeting?
“It's always when someone says, ‘That won’t work in my market,’” he admits. “It happens everywhere. The French say they’re different. The Germans say they’re different. The Brits say they’re different. And often, they are.”
But the challenge, and the opportunity, is in resisting the reflex to fragment. “Before we focus on what divides us,” Raucher says, “we have to align on what unites us.”
Of course, unity isn’t a given. Especially not when brand, e-commerce, retail, and agencies are interpreting the same brief in different time zones, languages, and commercial pressures.
Alignment Before Ideas
So how does ASICS avoid the fragmentation that so often creeps in when campaigns go global?
“It starts with being aligned on shared objectives,” Raucher says. “That’s where things go wrong most often—when people assume alignment instead of confirming it.”
For Raucher, that means putting those assumptions in writing. Getting it down. Creating regular project checkpoints that force cross-functional teams to come together, not just at the end, when things are baked, but throughout. “Too often, teams go off in isolation. Then when they reconnect, they realise they’ve drifted apart.”
It’s not just internal teams. Global campaigns require global orchestration, across cultures, departments, and partner agencies.
“As much as there’s an art to campaign development, there’s also a science,” Raucher says. “There are processes that can make or break alignment.”
One of those moments? The brief itself.
“Before we brief anything globally, we make sure everyone sees what’s coming. Who’s the audience? What’s the insight? What are we actually trying to communicate? If we can align on those things upfront, then we avoid getting stuck in personal opinions later.”
In other words: alignment before ideas.
It also means rejecting the outdated relay-race model of campaign creation, where one lead agency generates the ‘big idea’ and then hands it down for execution.
“I don’t believe in that model,” he says. “I want our media agency, PR agency, above-the-line agency, everyone, to be at the table at the same time, from the start. Because great ideas can come from anywhere.”
It’s not just collaboration. It’s creative equity. “When you bring everyone in early, they all have skin in the game. No one feels like they’re being asked to execute someone else’s vision.”
It’s the difference between implementation and ownership. Between delivering a campaign and believing in one.
And it’s that sense of belief, shared, not siloed, that seems to power ASICS forward.
When it comes to brands outside of ASICS, Gary Raucher doesn’t reach for what’s trending. He respects what endures.
“From a professional point of view, I admire brands which have dared to be consistent over time,” he says. “It’s tempting to chase the next new thing, but the strongest brands are the ones which stay true to their core.”
He references Dove and Volvo. For him, they’re brands that have stayed the course. “Dove’s Real Beauty; Volvo’s safety. They continue to do this admirably.”
Personally, it’s about emotional connection and utility. “The first thing I do every morning is check the ESPN app,” Raucher says. “It offers me carefully curated content about my favourite American sports teams, which, next to family and friends, is what I miss most about living abroad.”
He’s also loyal to Apple. Not because it’s flawless, but because it fits his life.
“I invest in a lot of Apple products, even though I know the quality of its competitors is probably superior. Having the whole family on one platform makes it much easier for us to all stay connected.”
It’s a pattern: clarity, consistency, connection. The same values that guide the brands he builds are the ones he invites into his daily life.
Anima Sana In Corpore Sano
But what is most telling about Raucher is this. Left on a desert island with no WiFi, no meetings, no slides to prep. What’s on Gary’s downloaded playlist? What’s in his lap?
“As much as I love music, I most likely wouldn't have headphones on,” Gary says. “Instead, I’d be enjoying the meditative sound of the waves.”
In his lap?
“A good book, a New York Times crossword puzzle, and a cold beer.”
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