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A product launch case study with OpenSponsorship

Pro surfer making a Just Protein smoothie outdoors with banana, mango and avocado for the Just Protein product launch campaign

When the team behind Just Egg - the plant-based egg brand from Eat Just, Inc. - was ready to bring their newest innovation to market, a single-ingredient protein powder called Just Protein, they came to OpenSponsorship with a clear ask: build a product launch campaign that felt like the product itself. Clean. Considered. Built for people who actually move their bodies. Not a typical protein-bro pitch.

That meant pro surfers, yoga teachers, skiers and lifestyle creators - not bodybuilders. And it meant running a tightly-scoped athlete sponsorship campaign that could prove ROI in the first 90 days.

Here's how we did it.

Campaign Overview

  • Brand: Just Protein (Eat Just, Inc., the makers of Just Egg)
  • Goal: Launch a brand-new, single-ingredient protein product into the DTC and retail market
  • Audience: Wellness-minded consumers, surf and yoga communities, clean-label shoppers
  • Activation: 11 athletes, multi-platform content (Instagram Reels, Stories, Carousels, TikTok)
  • Result: 240K campaign reach, 193K views, 12K total engagement, and an aggregate 2.1x ROI in earned media value across the activated roster.

Why Surfers? Picking the Right Talent for a Product Launch

Plenty of brands launch a new protein and chase the biggest follower counts they can afford. Just Protein didn't want that. They wanted athletes whose feeds already read like the brand: ocean light, morning routines, plant-forward food, real bodies, real training.

Pro surfer Ellie Brown holding Just Protein next to her Salty Crew surfboard for the Just Protein product launch campaign

OpenSponsorship's athlete database lets brands filter creators by sport, audience demographic, engagement rate and aesthetic match - not just follower count. For Just Protein, the matching engine surfaced a roster anchored by professional surfers and rounded out with yoga, climbing and ski athletes who shared the same wellness DNA.

The activated roster of 11 athletes included:

Pro surfers

  • Koa Smith - Hawaii-based pro surfer and creator, 331K Instagram followers
  • Brianna Cope - Pro surfer from Kauai, 207K followers
  • Kassia Meador - Pro longboarder and surf-wellness retreat leader, 110K followers
  • Michael Dunphy - Quiksilver-backed pro surfer, 42K followers
  • Chantalla Furlanetto - Free surfer and TV host splitting time between Florianopolis and California
  • Ellie Brown - Maui-based surfer

Yoga and lifestyle creators

  • Tamara Jones - Online yoga studio founder, 490K Instagram followers
  • Jada A - Yoga creator with 676K on TikTok
  • Margo Hayes - World Champion sport climber, 224K followers

Snow athletes

Six surfers, three yoga and creator voices, and two snow athletes - a roster designed to launch Just Protein across the exact lifestyle communities the brand wanted to own.

Nailing the Creative Brief

Surf and lifestyle creator preparing a Just Protein smoothie in a tropical-fruit kitchen setup - ingredient-honest product launch content

Most product-launch campaigns die in the brief. The athlete posts the product, says "thanks for the gift," and the brand wonders why nothing converts.

For Just Protein, we worked directly with the brand team to translate the science of the product - a clean, single-ingredient protein you could actually pronounce - into creative cues each athlete could interpret in their own voice. Surfers showed the protein in pre-dawn routines and post-session smoothies. Yoga teachers folded it into mat-side wellness content. The shared aesthetic was sun, salt, slowness and ingredient honesty - not gym-mirror reps.

The OpenSponsorship account team handled all of the back-and-forth: creative brief approvals, shot lists, hashtag strategy, FTC disclosure, content approvals, and post-go-live tagging. The brand never had to chase a single athlete for a deliverable.

Testing Different Content Formats

Because Just Protein was new to market, every post was also a test. We ran a mix of:

  • Instagram Reels - the highest-reach format, used for hero product reveals
  • Instagram Stories - for swipe-up conversion and discount-code redemption
  • Instagram Carousels - for ingredient education and recipe walkthroughs
  • TikTok - for top-of-funnel discovery, especially through the yoga and skier creators

Yoga creator in upward facing dog pose with Just Protein green smoothie on mat - lifestyle creator content for Just Protein product launch

This format-by-format approach gave the brand real data on what resonated with their target audience - so the next phase of Just Protein's marketing wasn't a guess.

Campaign Results

Across 11 activated athletes, Just Protein generated:

  • 240,000 total campaign reach
  • 193,000 total campaign views
  • 12,000 total engagement (likes, comments, saves, shares)
  • 2.1x ROI in earned media value against campaign spend

Just Protein product launch campaign Instagram collage featuring surfer and yoga creators

The top-performing athletes by ROI were Kassia Meador (9.1x), Tamara Jones (3.0x), and Chantalla Furlanetto (2.5x) - reinforcing the brief's instinct that a smaller, perfectly-matched creator beats a larger, mis-targeted one for a product launch.

Watch the Campaign Recap

 

What a Product Launch Looks Like with the Right Athletes

Just Protein's launch wasn't a one-off seeding drop. It was a structured product launch campaign with creative oversight, athlete management, performance reporting and a tested format mix - all run end-to-end by OpenSponsorship's tech-enabled agency team.

If you're launching a new product and want a roster of pro surfers, yoga teachers or other lifestyle athletes built specifically around your aesthetic, book a call - we'll show you the same matching engine that built the Just Protein roster.

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