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As longtime readers of this newsletter know, I’m a big sports guy. Which is why I’m so excited about the world’s biggest sporting event, which this year is happening right here on North American soil: the NBA Finals!
That sound you hear is every single one of my readers outside the United States booing me. Just kidding, friends! Even my ignorant, NFL-loving self is aware that real football is touching down in America soon, in the form of the World Cup. It doesn’t get any bigger than that. It’s like the NBA Finals of sports.
I’ve examined European football before, and while I haven’t exactly been converted, I did have to admit that there’s some excellent creator marketing going on within the world’s favorite sport. We’ll have plenty of dedicated World Cup coverage here at HBBIP and elsewhere at CreatorIQ, but for now, just to whet the appetite, how about profiling a brand that will play a central role in the action?
So pack your sharpest kit, get your songs in order, shell out thousands of dollars for a ticket and transportation, and join me as we take a closer look at…
This one has a pretty interesting backstory, so buckle up. Who says I never teach you anything?
A (somewhat estranged) brother brand to fellow apparel standout Adidas, Puma was founded in 1948 in the surprisingly consequential small town of Herzogenaurach. (Tough draw for street-sign manufacturers.) Shoe magnate Rudolph “Rudi” Dassler decided to one-up his brother, Adidas founder and unfortunate name-haver Adolf “Adi” Dassler, by starting his own global behemoth.
It’s a fascinating tale of sibling and corporate rivalry that I won’t get into here, but suffice it to say that the Dasslers’ mother loved both brands equally.
Through all the ups and downs and awkward family reunions, Puma has emerged as one of the biggest names in sports apparel. But at least one question remains:
When a global apparel brand activates tens of thousands of creators year after year, you don’t necessarily expect the massive, exponential growth you might see for up-and-coming brands. Sure enough, what stands out with Puma are the fluctuating, variable patterns in its growth, which does still trend upwards overall.
Let’s break it down.
Puma Creator Count, 2020 - 2025
In 2020, Puma earned mentions from 14k global creators. By 2025, that number had climbed to 42k creators, for a clean 3x growth. This expansion was particularly strong from 2023 to 2025, a pattern that carried over into other metrics, including…
Puma Post Count, 2020 - 2025
Those creators posted frequently enough to maintain a very aesthetic data pattern, with steady rises across the board. We saw another almost-exactly-3x growth in this metric, with Puma’s post count surging from 81.1k in 2020 to 239.4k in 2025.
Puma EMV, 2020 - 2025
Earned Media Value (EMV) tells us how much of a viral impact these posts make on social media. In this case, while Puma’s EMV improved each year, the brand’s total growth over these six years was ‘just’ 2x: $393M to $780M.
Note, however, how 2025 was just a smidge better than 2024—a slowdown we’ll see with at least one other metric.
Puma Impressions, 2020 - 2025
Impressions presents variations on these patterns: our first drop, in this case from 2021 to 2022, coupled with another slight slowdown from 2024 to 2025. Still, Puma improved its impressions from 5.6B in 2020 to 9.8B in 2025, a 1.75x growth that’s extremely impressive given the scale at which the brand is operating.
Puma Engagements, 2020 - 2025
But here’s where things get interesting. Puma’s engagements moved from: 379.7M in 2020 to 473.7M in 2025, a healthy 1.25x growth. But it wasn’t an easy path, and as you can see, Puma’s engagements have actually been moving backwards for the last few years.
This is a more extreme version of a common trend we’ve seen across high-growth brands: impressions continue to scale, but engagements stay flat.
Puma Share of Impressions by Platform, April 2025 - March 2026
Platform distribution tells part of the story here. Instagram overwhelmingly dominates impressions, accounting for over three-quarters of the pie. TikTok contributes meaningful scale, and YouTube plays a supporting role, but this is a brand very much anchored to Instagram.
Puma Share of Engagements by Platform, April 2025 - March 2026
The picture shifts a bit more tow
This skew toward Instagram becomes even more pronounced when you examine engagements. Nearly 80% of all interactions are happening there. But it’s worth watching TikTok as a channel, especially given that it’s punching above its weight in terms of engagements proportion relative to impressions proportion.
Keeping that in mind, let’s ask ourselves:
Who Are Puma's Creators?
1. Distinct creator formats emerged across four major content pillars
Ultimately, I saw four well-defined content formats for Puma’s top-performing posts:
2. Two massive sports properties fueled the brand's EMV
From April 2025 to March 2026, top creator posts about Puma were dominated by two football institutions: Galatasaray ($3.9M EMV, 39 posts) and Manchester City ($3M, 29 posts). These owned team accounts tag Puma in signature moments like Galatasaray kit launches, Man City jersey reveals, and matchday posts. Typically, these posts feature more athletes than creators, but the results speak for themselves: such high-profile partnerships commonly rank among Puma’s top posts by engagements.
3. ROSÉ x Speedcat was the year's signature cultural moment
Blackpink member ROSÉ (@roses_are_rosie) proved Puma’s standout partner during the time period monitored. Her 10 posts flaunting Puma gear generated $1.6M EMV, each one sitting right at the top 10 of the brand posts leaderboard. The resulting ROSÉ x Speedcat collab generated enormous secondary amplification across global creators, with Blackpink fans in Indonesia, Korea, France, and beyond sharing their own unboxings, hauls, and reactions.
On the subject of celebrity campaigns, FENTYxPUMA, featuring Rihanna, ASAP Rocky, and Alton Mason followed the same pattern, yielding high-impact posts from both A-list partners and everyday creators. Taken together, ROSÉ and Rihanna represented a pop culture power duo that generated both direct and organic impressions at an enormous scale.
However, as seen from Puma’s flagging engagements, brands can’t live on global celebrities or football superstars alone. Smaller-scale creators are key to boosting engagements, especially compared to the most macro of macro-scale creators, who tend to score big impressions without particularly deep content interaction from audiences.
Given how the brand has risen to the challenge before, I expect that Puma is once again poised to pounce.
*All data, unless otherwise specified, stems from CreatorIQ's public-facing brand leaderboards. We will never share performance metrics from a customer's CreatorIQ profile, or any brand's private information.
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