Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.

This week’s guest is Anissa Jaffery, the PR and brand collaborations lead for EMEA at Asics SportStyle. Anissa is one of those people whose age doesn’t seem to reflect their experience — in just a little over a decade, she’s held roles at Karla Otto, Purple PR, Net-a-Porter, Topshop, Calvin Klein, and even an e-bike company called VanMoof.

Anissa joined Asics’s SportStyle division in 2024. Two years in, the company is turning up at Milan Design Week, which kicks off on Monday. I called her up to get more details on that.

Hi, Anissa. What’s the scoop?

Asics SportStyle will be hosting a three-day pop-up at Garage 21 during Milan Design Week to introduce our new shoe, the Gel Kinetic 2.0. This is the first time we’ll be at the Milan fair, but it’s also our first major cultural activation in Italy, which has always been a really important market for SportStyle. As of this year, it’s become a key focus market for us from a marketing perspective, too. We felt it was important to lead with an in-line product as opposed to a collaboration.

What is the activation?

It’s essentially a trial experience that we called the Kinetic Playscape. We’ve designed it in partnership with an LA-based design studio called Nuova Group. Visitors will enter this retro-futuristic immersive world, physically try on the shoe, and feel the benefits of the technology whilst moving through the space. Ultimately, we hope people put the shoe on and feel energized to move, bounce, and jump around the space.

Will you be able to buy the shoe at the pop-up?

No, there’s no purchase at the end, actually. We wanted to focus on the experience. But we work really closely in partnership with a lot of stores close by, like [Milan clothing store] Slam Jam, where you can then purchase the shoes if you wish to.

This is a possibly silly question, but the Gel Kinetic is a new product. Why does it look familiar?

One thing that is really nice about Asics is that we rarely launch a brand new silhouette. It’s a Japanese term we use internally called Kaizen, which means continuous improvement. So every shoe you will see, especially in the SportStyle range, is either a bringback or a more modern adaptation of the archive. The kinetic range was first introduced with Kiko Kostadinov back in 2021. And then we brought it in line in 2022, and we have been building on the model since. This is the latest iteration of that silhouette.

You’ve had a varied career in PR and brand communications. What are some lessons you’ve learned when it comes to building a brand?

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned, which applies to all the jobs I’ve had so far, is to always stay focused on the consumer. It’s easy in our industry to get caught up in what you personally find exciting and maybe want to apply to your own experience. But the real question should always be: “Does this resonate with the audience that we’re trying to reach?” Building an emotional connection drives much stronger and longer-lasting loyalty. Also, collaboration is key: the best ideas rarely happen in isolation.

What’s the first thing you do when you take on a new product or, in the past, a new client?

The first one is, what does the brand stand for? Looking at some really successful brands, even outside of the fashion space, they have a very clear message. If you think of Ikea, it’s affordable Scandinavian design. Volvo has always been about safety. At Asics, we try to talk about comfort a lot in our messaging. And then knowing who the audience you are trying to reach is equally important.

Maybe this is a little too in the weeds of marketing lingo, but I really love that quote from [British advertising tycoon] David Ogilvy, who said, “Give me the freedom of a tight brief.” I think if you can do that as a brand, then you’re on the right track to success.

What’s your take on intellectual influencers?

I think it’s really interesting that they’re gaining trust through knowledge rather than popularity and translating that expertise into engaging formats. It’s funny because in the world of sports, for example, when you want to improve your technique or experience, you will look for reviews and recommendations in more traditional spaces and not so much to influencers. It’s the same, maybe in the technology space or music, anything more technical.

So I do find it really interesting that it’s spilling into the lifestyle world because, in a way, the concept is not that new. At SportStyle, while we might not call the people we work with intellectual influencers, we definitely have always been very mindful of who we engage with. We work with chefs, producers, directors... people who will wear the shoe, and they might not talk about it or post it, but they’re in communities that find their opinion credible. It almost brings you back to that school mentality of “This is my most influential friend, and I want to be like that person.”

You can catch up with last week’s Scoop with Paul Smith’s Foundation’s Martha Mosse here.