Inside the marketing powering Whoop’s ‘pivotal’ next act

When wearable fitness-tracking brand Whoop hired its new CMO in July, it marked a new chapter for both brand and executive.

Whoop was fresh off a $575 million Series G funding round that valued the brand at $10.1 billion, positioning it to potentially go public amid a surge in the global wearables market. DJ van Hameren, who spent more than three decades at Nike before exiting two years ago, was looking for his next act.

“I have always had a growth mindset and love to figure out how we tell stories, we build brands, and we grow businesses,” van Hameren told us. “I felt there was a part of me that really was curious about a number of areas, specifically around sports.” After a conversation with Whoop founder and CEO Will Ahmed and other team members, “it was really, really clear within a matter of minutes or hours that this would be a phenomenal next chapter,” he added.

Van Hameren was the first of many new executive appointments, including a new chief commercial officer, its first-ever chief communications officer, a chief medical officer who oversees Whoop’s consumer health strategy, and a chief accounting officer. The brand’s leadership overhaul comes amid a broadening of its marketing strategy that seeks to diversify its user base and highlight how sport and health connect to daily life, van Hameren told Marketing Brew.

Whoop has, since its founding in 2012, traditionally been more associated with an “athletic male American base,” per the Wall Street Journal; it’s now focusing on women users. And it’s looking to target both athletes and everyday consumers through methods including partnerships with major fitness competitors and athletes (some of whom are the company’s investors) as well as through owned media, like its weekly Whoop Podcast.

Whoop, which in July announced it had more than 3 million members worldwide, is looking to grow amid more intense competition in the wearables space. Oura, a smart ring that tracks health metrics and is targeting an IPO that could value the company at as much as $16 billion, , and Apple continues to dominate the space with around 18% of market share as of Q1, according to data firm IDC. The wearable technology market overall is $103.1 billion in size as of 2026, according to Grand View Research, and is projected to increase to $229.9 billion by 2033.

“People’s health is every day,” van Hameren said. “One of the greatest challenges or opportunities we have as a marketing team is to find those key moments…and at the same time, find ways to be relevant to members every second or every minute of the day without that becoming an over-sensory load of messages, ” he said.

Race to the finish

Partnering with sports properties has been a core part of Whoop’s marketing strategy since before van Hameren’s arrival. Last September, the company partnered with the Ryder Cup golf tournament as its official health and fitness wearable in a deal that also entailed an activation on NBC called “Whoop Live” where viewers could track the heart rates of various players. Whoop burnished the partnership with social media campaigns.

Van Hameren plans to continue Whoop’s focus on sports partnerships as a way to reach both athletes and the everyday consumers who watch them, he told us. Before van Hameren joined, Whoop already had inked multiyear partnerships with sports organizations including the PGA Tour and Premier Padel. With van Hameren at the helm, the brand is looking to activate around the Berlin Marathon in September and the Dubai Fitness Challenge, a 30-day fitness movement taking place across the city starting in October, he told us.

“We’re expanding our presence and meeting consumers where they are as they are living their life and making life meaningful through sport,” van Hameren said.

Gain ground

As it continues to develop its user base, Whoop is also tailoring some of its marketing to women, van Hameren said. As of August, the brand, which recently partnered with a menstrual-cycle-tracking app, has seen a 111% YoY increase in women members, according to a press release. Whoop is also looking to athlete partnerships to expand into the women’s market, inking a partnership with the reigning US Open women’s singles champ, Aryna Sabalenka, who used Whoop to help her prepare for the tournament last year.

The Whoop Podcast is also another push into brand-building. The podcast, which debuted in 2018, has featured an array of guests like Sabalenka and Quest Diagnostics CEO Jim Davis, who break down their own tips for wellness and approaches to training. Van Hameren sees the podcast as an important owned media channel for Whoop, one that could also help reach a broad swath of consumers: in recent months, it has dedicated episodes to discussing topics relevant to women, like fertility and reproductive health.

“Owned media is powerful when it does not feel like a brand talking at people,” van Hameren said. “It has to earn attention through substance.”

New fields

As van Hameren develops his marketing vision for Whoop, he’s thinking about activations on CTV and social to complement Whoop’s owned media with paid media, he said. So far this year, the brand has run about $2 million in national linear TV ads, according to data compiled by iSpot for Marketing Brew; the biggest bucket of that spend, by network, was 15.2% of total spend to the Golf Channel, with ABC following with 12.5% of spend, per iSpot. (Breaking that spend down by program, Whoop dropped 20.9% of its spend on the PGA Tour, followed by the X Games Aspen, an action sports competition that ran on ESPN and ABC, which accounted for 18.2% of spend.)

That’s a big increase from a year ago, when, per iSpot, the brand spent $488,000 on national linear TV ads through all of 2025.

As Whoop focuses on reaching women and other users, expanding its international marketing will also be a priority, van Hameren said. Whoop operates in 56 markets, and van Hameren said 60% of its business is “outside of the North America market.” (In the wearable tech market overall, North America held 33% market revenue share as of 2025, according to Grand View Research.)

For consumers who haven’t yet seen marketing from Whoop, it’s likely only a matter of time: the brand is planning to market heavily around Black Friday and Cyber Monday as consumers begin thinking about their 2027 resolutions.

“We also tend to see strong momentum heading into the new year, when people are thinking about their health and wellness goals, so the holiday and resolution period is a natural opportunity to introduce more people to Whoop,” van Hameren said.