Is Puma actually winning over Gen Z?

July 1st, 2025 - 5 mins read

Puma launched its first global brand campaign in a decade in 2024, and followed it up with an even bigger one in 2025 (“Go Wild”), which pivoted messaging from high-performance athleticism to everyday self-expression.
Tracksuit data shows that this has impacted Gen Z women in the UK, with Consideration lifting 14-percentage-points from Oct ‘24 to May ‘25, and Usage jumping 20-percentage points.
However, we’re not seeing this reflected in all markets, with no significant changes in the US, suggesting that its messaging isn’t resonating globally. Sales have also been flat in 2025.

A new era

In 2024, Puma launched its first global campaign in a decade – “ Forever. Faster. See the Game Like We Do” – which unified its messaging across all sports, and intended to position Puma as a product that helped athletes achieve high performance. It featured a handful of sports stars, with the ads leaning right into that slow-mo, inspirational-music, cheering-crowd visual imagery that we as consumers are intimately familiar with. Puma claimed that brand perception had improved as a result, but it was still doggy-paddling in a very competitive landscape, the aspirational messaging not quite landing with everyday consumers.

In March 2025, it pivoted, and one-upped its 2024 attempt with an even bigger global marketing campaign: “ Go Wild”. Produced by agency Adam&Eve, Go Wild focused more on the everyday athlete – the people just trying to walk their dogs, struggle up steep hills, and make social connections at run clubs. Why? According to Puma’s own marketing research, the “performance at any cost” messaging wasn’t really resonating with Gen Z. They were more interested in the idea of “self-expression”, which, in this context, I think is rooted in the idea of relatability.

This campaign is no drop in the bucket for the brand. Puma is upping its marketing investment by 40% in 2025, and Go Wild represents the largest global campaign in the brand's history that's being amplified across digital, out-of-home, PR, social, TV and retail.

In 2025, our brand data shows that Puma is building pace with Gen Z women… in the UK

So, is the major investment paying off already? The tide could very well be turning, and its brand marketing efforts have not gone unnoticed. In fact, in the UK, Puma has seen very significant increases in its brand health metrics from Oct 2024 to May 2025.

Among 18-35 year old women, from Oct ’24 to May ‘25:

Consideration has increased 14-percentage-points sitting at 47%.
Investigation has lifted 13-percentage-points sitting at 45%.
Claimed Usage has jumped 20-percentage-points sitting at 43%.
Preference has also significantly increased 4-percentage-points sitting at 7%.

The brand has also become more effective at converting awareness into consideration. Among the same age group, its top-of-funnel conversion rate has risen by 17-percentage-points from 40% to 57%. This is in line with the category average.

So is Puma actually winning over Gen Z? The answer is complicated. We’re seeing that these results vary across markets, including in the US, where these changes have not been reflected in the US market. There has been no statistically significant changes in the same time period in the US, except for a 3% decrease in preference.

‘Is for people like me’ is the biggest driver down the funnel

No surprises here. Puma found in their own research that self-expression and relatability mean the most to their audiences, and our research only backs that up. Puma needs to continue to focus their marketing efforts on emotionally connecting with target audiences, like Gen Z, because as we’ve seen time and time again: the biggest converter down the funnel is the statement ‘Is for people like me’.

Basically, this means that if someone in this category thinks a brand is for people like them, then they are 3.3x more likely to convert down from awareness to consideration.

Where does Gen Z hang out?

Tracksuit's new Media Consumption report shows that the 18 to 24 year old age group in this category overwhelmingly spend their time on TikTok; that's the number one most consumed platform amongst those of this generation.

This is followed by Paid Streaming Platforms and Snapchat – a top three that differs significantly from other demographics.

Should they even be going after Gen Z?

While the benefits of targeting a younger generation are obvious – brand loyalty takes a long time to build and can last a lifetime – our Category Profile page shows that brands in this category do over-index in the 18 to 24 and 25 to 34 year old age groups (when filtered by awareness).

Our data shows the whitespace can be found in the 55 to 64 year old age group.

Puma still has a way to go yet to see brand efforts reflected in sales

Puma had reported to be missing sales and profit expectations (according to some reports, this is partly due to some ranges, like the Speedcats, not doing as well as they thought). However, as we know, brand is a long game, and it may take some time to see the results of brand investment. We’ll keep an eye on it for you.