Academy Sports + Outdoors has named digital marketing firm Acadia AOR for customer analytics. Acadia was founded by former 360i CEO Jared Belsky and BizChair founder Sean Belnick two years ago. 

 The agency is tasked with helping Academy beef up its in-house data and analytics capabilities to better market to existing customers.  

To do so, Acadia is imbedding data/analytics specialists in-house at the client, drawing on the agency’s wider resources as needed.  

Academy has grown steadily over the past decade – from reported revenue of $3.7 billion in 2012 to more than $6 billion in the last fiscal year. The sporting goods and outdoor recreation company was founded in 1938 an went public in 2020.  

The client attributes greater focus on customer analytics as one factor driving its growth and expects that ratcheting up its investment in that area will accelerate growth further.  

Academy initiated an RFP process and selected Acadia “to further build their in-house analytics capability, optimize and make more use of its industry leading technology and data, and focus on customer understanding, predictive modeling, dashboarding, and audience activation.” 

Serving the data and analytics needs of agency clients can be a delicate undertaking — often clients are concerned about revealing too much information about their customer base.  

According to Belsky, many marketers have also told him they need help but don’t want agencies to handle their customer analytics because it slows down the process. At the same time, they want agency expertise to develop their own capabilities in-house.  

Belsky adds that many agencies aren’t willing to do this, though he believes they will need to rethink their positions if they expect to develop robust data/analytics practices.  

‘It’s getting harder to acquire customers, and CPMs are going up,” said Belsky. “As the market gets more competitive and more money flows to digital, clients are realizing they need to prioritize knowing and caring for their best customers again. We can help clients get back to those basics.” 

“I think this is a sign of things to come,” said Belsky, of Acadia’s approach to serving the data/analytics needs of Academy. “Agencies will need to give up being territorial and meet clients where they are on customer analytics. If you think you need to own everything as an agency, you’re going to die a slow death.” 

Academy Sports + Outdoors, based in Katy, TX, has grown to 282 stores across 18 states.  

Acadia now has a staff of 225 and locations in Atlanta, Grand Rapids, and New York City, as well as employees in various locations around the globe. Services include paid and retail media, earned and owned media, development and e-commerce, analytics and intelligence, and more.