Ciara Palfreyman
Over the past 18 months, Elliott, Social Media Lead at Myprotein, has redefined the brand’s approach to social. Moving from a reactive and trend-led presence to a more strategic, narrative-driven model - the team has driven significant growth across global channels. From high-performing moments like the HYROX World Championship to standout collaborations such as Big Boy Bake in Gold’s Gym Tokyo, the shift has been powered by more deliberate storytelling and stronger creative execution.
In this Q&A, Elliott shares what it takes to scale social at a global level, the moments that defined that growth, and the thinking behind building a more connected and high-performing content ecosystem.
What does a typical day look like for a Social Media Lead at Myprotein?
It’s a little cliche especially in the world of social, but really, no two days are the same. I could be looking at upcoming shoots we are doing and approving the team’s ideation, working on ideas of my own, overseeing and working with our brand, events, influencer or trade teams on opportunities to even jumping on shoots to capture content myself. Most days I am looking at data – how things are performing, what’s working and what we need to change. That’s a big part of the role not many people see day to day but it’s crucial to make sure we are on the right track and in line with our strategic goals.
When you first took on the role, what did Myprotein’s social presence look like?
When I first took on the role over a year and a half ago, in my view it was a little disjointed, especially across the vast number of countries we had a social presence in but also generally on our main accounts.
Myprotein was very heavy on podcasts, news and reactive social posting, as well as a lot of competitions and we were really still trying to work out our identity. MP Activewear was a fledgling page at the time, and we didn’t have our Myprotein Pro page, both of which have come on leaps and bounds since then.
What did “success” look like for you when setting out to grow the channels?
I remember sitting down with numerous people both inside and outside of the business when I came in to get some honest opinions on our socials, and some of the words really stuck with me. Things like “Soft”, “Flat”, “uncool”, “out of touch”.
Hard metrics are important, at a simple look, we really wanted to grow engagement as that is always a great indicator that you are doing something right – but more stringently I wanted to change that opinion of our socials holistically. I think we’ve done a great job in getting into a more engaged space with a more well thought out social proposition from where we were.
Finally it was in our planning, one of the key issues we had was that we weren’t planning far enough in advance to make good content and allow for truly great social ideation and that’s something I was very keen to change quickly and we did.
Was there a specific moment or campaign where you saw growth really accelerate?
For me this was the 2025 HYROX World Championship, this was a true reflection of everything we set out to change when I first joined the business culminating in a key brand moment for us. Months of planning, storytelling and content creation throughout the HYROX season culminated here and then some. It was one of our most engaged periods in the history of our socials and the content we got outputted I think was fantastic. This allowed us to really kick on and capitalise on the performance and audience we brought in to showcase our growth.
More recently this has been showcased on MPActivewear with our Valentines Day collection. One of our best product launches ever in my opinion and because of the success of the content, this saw us match our entire 2025 results in the first 8 weeks of 2026.
How do you balance performance-driven content with brand storytelling?
It’s a difficult thing to do but when you have time and space to ideate, when you can capitalise on trends as well as proven formats, and when you know the audience that you consistently want to speak to, brand storytelling content becomes performance driving.
Of course, we split these often, but product is at the heart of everything we do. We’re in this business to create cool things, sure – but at the end of the day we want to showcase our amazing product range that has so many benefits for so many people. We’re also willing to test and learn and in some cases fail to know how we can balance these better.
A mantra we keep in our social team is - “it’s okay to fail but never okay to fail the same way twice.”
What piece(s) of content have been a highlight of yours?
Three stand out the most to me:
Big Boy Bake x Myprotein in Golds Gym Tokyo – a collaborative piece of content with Joshua Baker that is our best ever performing organic post on Instagram with over a quarter of a million engagements and 8m views – this was so much fun to be a part of.
Roger, the 80-year-old cancer survivor to took on HYROX – this came organically to us through our DMs and really shows the power of our community. Watching him put in all the work as we followed his training journey all the way to him crossing the line was emotional to say the least.
Our first proper long form shot edit on Myprotein Pro with Ross Edgley - I actually climbed a mountain on a broken ankle in the Scottish Highlands to support the shoot for this, and I think it’s a great representation of a beautiful location, amazing story and fantastic end result.
It’s very hard to not be romantic about the content we make, I could probably give you a story about 90% of the content that gets outputted on our channels.
How do you approach the global strategy?
For me the approach starts with our audience. Who are we targeting on each of our pages. You can’t target everyone or else you are speaking really to no one. Once we have this set, it’s then working on tone, content guides and structure, and then it’s targets.
The most amazing thing is our communities and talent in each market and it’s supporting them which is a big part of our strategy. We are no longer just talking about them, we are actively involved in creating with them and part of their journey. Whether that’s a collection launch in Hungary, a German Mr Olympia candidate or someone in Birmingham wanting to do their first HYROX, we have content for them.
It’s then about consistency and collaboration; a global strategy must be that – global. It’s not Germany vs Spain vs the UK – it's about pooling together to create the best thing that works across markets.