CASE FILE — FOOT LOCKER × PUMA × GEN.G
International Coordination · Cross-Cultural Activation
How three global brands activated in Seoul by building around what Korean fans were already doing — not what Western playbooks said they should.
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CASE FILE: N. REMIS — LEAD INVESTIGATOR
I've Watched Campaigns Die Up Close.
This Is What I Learned.
Not a theory borrowed from a textbook. Not a framework built in a vacuum. Sixteen years of being in the room when marketing campaigns succeeded, failed, and sometimes died for reasons nobody on the team could name.
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How PUMA Strengthened Its Standing in Korean Esports — by Borrowing Credibility It Hadn't Yet Earned
PUMA had the partnership with Gen.G. It had the collection.
What it needed was a way to turn a co-branded drop into
genuine community visibility. A forensic breakdown of how
an in-store activation built on existing fan rituals did exactly that.
Client
Foot Locker Asia · PUMA · Gen.G Esports
Location
Seoul, South Korea — Foot Locker in-store activation
Industry
Sportswear / Consumer Retail / Esports
Campaign Type
In-store activation · Collectible mechanics · Influencer and talent integration · Cross-cultural UGC strategy
Format amplification
Physical retail experience + digital extension + social
Service
Campaign Coordination (The Morgue)
THE CONTEXT
PUMA had a partnership with Gen.G — one of Korea's most established esports organisations — and a co-branded fashion collection to promote.
Gen.G already belonged in the Korean esports community.
They had the roots, the fanbase, and the credibility that takes years to build. PUMA had the partnership on paper. What it didn't yet have was the same standing with those fans.
The opportunity was to use the activation to close that gap — to turn a co-branded collection launch into a moment that strengthened PUMA's visibility within a community where Gen.G's credibility could vouch for it.
THE CHALLENGE
Borrowed credibility only transfers if the activation feels native to the people you're trying to reach. A Western sportswear brand promoting a collection in Seoul through a generic retail mechanic would read as exactly that — generic, imported, forgettable.
Korean youth culture had two behaviours any brand wanting to reach this audience needed to understand: an established photo booth culture with specific aesthetics and sharing rituals, and a card collecting and trading culture rooted in gaming and fandom.
The challenge was to build PUMA's activation inside those existing behaviours rather than alongside them — coordinating three partners with separate teams (PUMA, Gen.G, Foot Locker Asia), each with their own requirements, into a single consumer journey that felt seamless to a fan walking into the store.
THE INVESTIGATION
What the Activation Was Built Around
The core insight: PUMA didn't need to manufacture a reason for Korean esports fans to care. It needed to attach itself to things they were already doing — and let Gen.G's presence make the brand's involvement feel earned rather than purchased.
The activation was designed around two existing fan rituals — photo booth culture and card collecting — so that engaging with the PUMA × Gen.G collection felt like an extension of behaviour fans already enjoyed, not an interruption of it.
Scope
✦ Multi-brand partnership coordination across PUMA, Gen.G, and Foot Locker Asia — aligning three separate teams with different timelines, approval processes, and brand requirements around a single in-store consumer journey.
✦ Consumer journey design and implementation:
— Collection purchase triggering collectible card distribution
— Branded photo booth experience with digital download delivery via email (extending engagement beyond the store visit)
— Reward mechanics: match tickets, meet & greet opportunities, discount codes, and vouchers integrated into the participation flow
✦ Collectible card program: design aligned to PUMA and Gen.G brand requirements, production coordination, distribution logistics, and inventory management across the activation period.
✦ Gen.G talent and creator integration: coordination of players and content creators for in-store appearances and social promotion — briefing, scheduling, and on-site management.
✦ UGC strategy and social amplification: activation designed to generate fan-created content naturally, with Gen.G social channels amplifying fan content to extend reach beyond in-store footfall.
✦ Budget management and KPI tracking across all activation elements, with post-campaign reporting across all partners.
KEY FINDINGS
01 —
Borrowed credibility transfers only when the activation is native. PUMA's standing with Korean esports fans was strengthened not because Gen.G's logo appeared next to it, but because the activation was built inside rituals those fans already performed. Partnership is permission to enter. Native execution is what turns permission into credibility.
02 —
Cultural integration is not the same as cultural reference. Using photo booths and card collecting because they look Korean is reference. Building the activation around how those behaviours actually function — the aesthetics, the sharing mechanics, the social context — is integration. The difference is invisible to brands that skip the research and immediately visible to the audience that lives it.
03 —
Three-partner activations need a coordination layer none of the three provides alone. PUMA, Gen.G, and Foot Locker Asia each had legitimate requirements that could have conflicted at every decision point. The activation worked because those requirements were aligned through a single coordination function rather than negotiated bilaterally between brands.
THE RESULTS
Operational delivery: Activation executed on schedule at the Foot Locker Seoul location. All collectible inventory distributed without reported logistics failures. Photo booth digital download system operational throughout. Gen.G talent deliverables met across in-store appearances and social promotion.
Long-term impact: The activation strengthened PUMA's visibility within the Korean esports community — generating in-store traffic and product demand for the co-branded collection through a fan experience rather than a promotional event. It demonstrated that
a brand can deepen its standing in a community where it holds a partnership by attaching itself to genuine local behaviour rather than importing a generic retail playbook.
5,000+
In-store visitors
300+
Collectibles distributed
70K+
Twitter total views
WHAT THE CLIENT SAID
This activation succeeded because the partnership was treated as a starting point, not a finish line. Having a deal with a credible local player gets you in the door. What earns you standing with their audience is building something that feels like it belongs to them.
That's a consumer behaviour decision before it's a creative one — and an operational one before it's either.
If your brand holds a partnership, sponsorship, or market position that isn't translating into genuine audience credibility — that's a diagnosable problem.
Let's find out what's actually getting lost between the deal and the audience.
The Beliefs That Built This Business
Belief 1
Conversion problems are psychological problems wearing a technical disguise.
Brands spend thousands optimizing button colors and testing headlines while the real cause of death — invisible cognitive friction, trust collapse, loss aversion triggers — goes completely unexamined...
Belief 2
Most marketing research tells you what customers say. Consumer neuroscience tells you what they do.
There's a gap between what people report in surveys and what they actually do...
Belief 3
Operational experience is not optional for a marketing consultant.
You cannot diagnose a campaign you've never had to deliver...
Belief 4
Honest findings are more valuable than comfortable ones.
I will tell you what's actually killing your conversions — not what's easiest to hear...
PRIOR INVESTIGATIONS — FIELD RECORD
The Work Before The Consumer Autopsy
Before building a forensic investigation consultancy, there were 16 years of campaigns, projects, and client relationships. Here's what that actually looked like.
€2.6M
Earned media value
KitKat LFL Esports
84M+
Total impressions
Single campaign
275%
ROI
SEAT x MAD Lions
84K
Unique Twitch viewers
Kia x LoL Series
The Evidence
PUMA · LG · KITKAT · MAGNUM · SANTANDER · KIA · FOOT LOCKER · SEAT · GARNIER · GEN.G · NORAUTO · MOUV' · DEL ARTE ·
Both projects explore the same core question from different angles: how do different brains process information, make decisions, and find meaning?
The Other Investigation
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In 10 Months:
1.32M
Pinterest impressions
50%
newsletter open rates (industry average: 21%)
250+
Email Subscribers
100%
Steady passive revenue through digital products
THE DETECTIVE BEHIND THE AUTOPSY
THE PROBLEM I KEPT SEEING
For almost four years, I managed the execution of marketing campaigns for brands like PUMA, LG, KitKat, Seat and Magnum as a Senior Project Manager at an international esports and gaming consulting agency. Timelines, budgets, influencer activations, social campaigns, film productions - I coordinated it all.
And I had a front-row seat to something nobody talked about: campaigns that were perfectly executed, delivered on time, within budget... and still didn't convert the way they should. The creative was strong. The targeting was right. The execution was flawless. But somewhere between the first touchpoint and the final conversion, customers disappeared.
THE QUESTION NOBODY WAS ASKING
I worked across esports, gaming, healthcare, finance and tech over 16+ years in customer experience and project management. Different industries, different brands, different budgets. Same pattern. Same cause of death. And in almost every post-mortem, the conversation went the same way: "Let's test a new headline". "Maybe the claim is wrong". "We need more traffic".
Nobody was asking the right question: why are customers behaving this way?
CASE FILE: N. Remis
10+
Global
Brands
Across
Europe
&
APAC
3
Languages: French, Spanish & English
16+ Years in
Customer
Experience
What to Expect
Three honest statements about how I work — no platitudes, no agency language, no promises I can't keep.
01
I will tell you what I find — not what you want to hear.
If your campaign is failing because of a fundamental positioning
problem, I'll say so. If the issue is a single friction point
fixable in 48 hours, I'll say that too.
The investigation determines the answer — not the budget, not
what's easiest to implement, not what protects anyone's ego.
You're paying for a forensic diagnosis, not reassurance.
02
I work remotely, globally, and asynchronously.
Based in Gijón, Spain. Fluent in Spanish, French, and English.
Eight years managing remote projects across Europe, APAC, and
the Americas taught me how to communicate clearly across time
zones, cultures, and languages without losing precision.
Remote work isn't a limitation. It's how I've delivered €2.6M
earned media campaigns and coordinated teams across six continents.
03
I'm building this in public.
The Consumer Autopsy is new. I'm not going to pretend otherwise
or hide behind corporate language that obscures the timeline.
What I bring: 16 years of real operational experience, rigorous
training in consumer psychology, and a genuine obsession with
understanding why customers behave the way they do.
If that's what your business needs — let's talk.
THE DETECTIVE BEHIND THE AUTOPSY
WHAT I ACTUALLY BELIEVE
I believe most marketing fails at the psychological level, not the executional one. Customers don't abandon carts because your checkout has too many steps. They abandon because something triggered loss aversion, created decision fatigue or broke the trust you spent weeks building. The friction is invisible which is why it's so dangerous.
And I believe the only way to fix it is to stop guessing and start investigating. Treat every conversion problem like a forensic case. Follow the evidence. Find the cause of death. Prescribe the exact fix.
WHY I WENT BACK TO STUDY
I spent years on the execution side wondering why no one was studying the psychology behind what I was seeing. So I did. Consumer Neuroscience & Neuromarketing at Copenhagen Business School. Market Research & Consumer Behavior at IE Business School. Google UX Design and Data Analytics certifications.
The more I studied, the more I recognized the patterns I'd been watching for years - finally explained by the science. The Consumer Autopsy is what happens when 8+ years of managing campaigns from the inside meets the psychology of why they live or die.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
When you work with me, you're not getting a theorist who's read the textbooks but never managed a real campaign. You're getting someone who has coordinated the timelines, chased the assets, sat in the client calls, watched the KPIs drop and then went back to study the psychological mechanisms behind all of it.
That combination - operational experience plus behavioral science - is exactly what forensic marketing investigation requires.
CASE FILE: N. Remis
10+
Global
Brands
Across
Europe
&
APAC
3
Languages: French, Spanish & English
16+ Years in
Customer
Experience
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