Stella Stoetzel
DICK'S Sporting Goods Campaign
Award Winning Academic PR Campaign
DICK'S Sporting Goods wanted to strengthen its position as a destination for lifestyle footwear among Gen Z consumers. My team created an award-winning campaign that combined consumer research, strategic planning, and creative execution to bring the idea to life.
*This campaign was developed as part of a new business competition at DePaul University, challenging teams to solve a real-world marketing brief for DICK'S Sporting Goods.
Campaign Strategy
Our campaign, Sole Ties, was built on the idea that sneakers are more than just footwear—they represent identity, creativity, and connection. Guided by our research, we developed a campaign that repositioned DICK'S Sporting Goods as a destination for lifestyle footwear by creating experiences that brought Gen Z together both online and in person.
To launch the campaign, we partnered with Love Island USA winners Serena Page and Kordell Beckham, whose relationship became synonymous with the show's iconic "Soul Ties" location. Their influence in fashion, strong connection with Gen Z, and appeal to both male and female audiences made them the ideal ambassadors to introduce the campaign.
The centerpiece of the campaign was a series of branded Sole Ties pop-up events in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Rather than building a community from scratch, we partnered with existing Hot Girl Walk organizations in each city, leveraging their established audiences and infrastructure to create high-attendance events under the DICK'S Sporting Goods brand.
Each pop-up featured group workout classes, sneaker customization stations, and interactive experiences where attendees could personalize a pair of lifestyle sneakers to match a best friend, significant other, or even a new friend they met at the event. These activations encouraged creativity while supporting the campaign's message that great connections can start with a shared pair of shoes.
To extend the campaign beyond the events, Serena and Kordell took over DICK'S social channels to share the story behind their own "Sole Tie" sneaker pair and introduce "DICK'S Solemate Matching App," an interactive shopping tool that matched users with the lifestyle sneaker best suited to their personality and preferences (Basically Tinder for shoes.) By turning shoe shopping into a personalized experience, the tool made shopping more engaging while helping Gen Z navigate DICK'S lifestyle footwear selection.
The campaign also incorporated a comprehensive earned and owned media strategy. We partnered with Giggly Squad, Hot Mess with Alix Earle, and The Complex Sneakers Show to reach audiences through trusted voices in lifestyle, fashion, and sneaker culture. To generate traditional media coverage, members of the press were invited to attend the pop-up events, creating opportunities for earned media and extending the campaign's reach beyond social platforms. Finally, we developed the Sole Tie Friendship Matchmaking Show, a YouTube series where participants were paired based on shared personalities and sneaker preferences, reinforcing the campaign's themes of connection, community, and self-expression.
Activations
Project Takeaways and Results
Developing this campaign gave me the opportunity to apply everything I learned throughout my PR and advertising coursework to a real-world business challenge. From conducting consumer research to developing the campaign strategy and presenting our recommendations, I gained valuable experience thinking through every stage of the creative process, as well as pitching in a professional setting.
One of the biggest takeaways from this project was learning how important strategy is to great creative work. Every recommendation we made was backed by research and designed to solve a specific challenge. We quickly learned that good ideas are most effective when they're backed by consumer insights.
Our campaign advanced through six rounds of judging, receiving feedback from classmates, professors, and industry professionals before reaching the final presentation. In the final round, our campaign was evaluated by Chicago PR agency leaders and members of the DICK'S Sporting Goods marketing team, where it was selected as the winning campaign over seven other teams. Presenting our work to industry professionals and seeing it recognized as the strongest campaign was one of the most rewarding experiences of my college career.