Maja Pawinska Sims 26 Jun 2025 // 3:44PM GMT

Robin Arzón is the vice president of fitness programming and head instructor at Peloton, where she leads the company’s efforts at the intersection of fitness and technology. A former lawyer, Arzón transitioned to a career in wellness, becoming a globally recognized fitness leader, 27-time marathon and ultra-marathon runner, and two-time New York Times bestselling author. Her focus is on empowering individuals to embrace movement as a source of strength and well-being.
In addition to her role at Peloton, Arzón is the founder of Swagger Society, a media company that promotes empowerment and personal growth. She also integrates her Latina heritage into her work, from a bilingual toy line to her efforts in promoting diversity and representation in fitness. Arzón has more than one million followers on Instagram, where she shares insights into her roles at Peloton, personal milestones, and motivational content. Her brand partnerships have included Adidas, who she worked with on the launch of the Adidas x Peloton Spring/Summer 2021 apparel collection, and performance training brand NOBULL, where she is involved beyond brand ambassadorship as part of the brand’s product launches and marketing strategy.
During Cannes Lions, Arzón spoke to Weber Shandwick’s chief strategy officer for North America, Robyn Adelson, about how she works with brands as a fitness and wellness influencer.
How have you scaled your work while staying true to who you are, and when working with brands?
When I wrote ‘Shut Up And Run: How to Get Up, Lace Up, and Sweat with Swagger’ in 2016 I didn’t want to choose between being an author and an executive at Peloton – it was a transition from a corporate gig to social media storytelling at the nascent stage of influencer marketing. One day I just stopped accepting free shoes as payment and it changed my life. In the urban athletic market, Latinas like me, Black and Brown folks are excited to embrace movement, there’s a lot more representation now but it was very early days. Brands wanted to pick my brains, and take my ideas for free, so I used my lawyer billable hours model and slowly moved from seeing it as a hobby, embraced a multi-hyphenate existence. There were many doors to walk through and many skillsets I could activate in moving through those doors.
I love the visceral engagement we have with our members at Peloton, I love launching movements and collaborating. We get to create pieces of art, and the folks on the other side of the screen are not having a passive experience, it’s living and breathing, it’s unscripted. When I’m working on traditional brand campaigns I bristle at the idea that we have to architect it to death – you have to let it breathe, and trust. There’s so much magic in friction that creates expansion. Knowing someone else is living that experience on the other side, you cannot build that kind of brand loyalty.
When I first started working with brands, I realised you’ve got to learn the game to break the rules. I’ve been on too many calls when I’ve been read a brand deck. Stop reading me the brand deck, I want to get in the meat of what we can create, how we want folks to feel when they experience this, that really excites me. And I’m always vocal about how I’m using my voice, and I’m not wolling to compromise my reputation. When my voice is on the line, that’s when I’m not wavering.
How do you stay authentic and consistent?
Consistency is the flex. Authenticity has been buzzworded to death, but it still has meaning – we’re so literate in media and have a high BS meter as consumers of a media diet. I try to look for connection points and see what my actions are revealing to me as values. What brands have I worked with, what art have I created, what story is that telling? I also have an internal conversation as a mom: how would working on this make my daughter and my son feel? That’s a filter I use quite often.
What feedback do you get from your audiences?
Sometimes too much! It’s important to me to understand what my audiences are speaking about, care about, are excited about. It’s bringing my followers in on little things, like styling for my new cookbook – the things that scale and the things that create community are sometimes at odds and these little things with my audience matter to me. I have a ‘day one’ mentality – that class you taught might be your 10,000th class, but are you still earning your right to be here? If I’m thinking “ugh, let’s just do another one”, it’s time to move on from that project.
Do you have a BS detector when you’re working with brands?
Part of it is gut feeling. I journal and do vision boards a lot. I try to silence the noise so I have enough time to have a conversation with myself; I’m plotting into 2026 now about dream collaborations. I’m over transactional brand ambassador roles, I like having an ownership stake in what I’m doing. Newer brands are willing to be more nimble; if I have more creative freedom and skin in the game, I’m paying attention. I get very excited when there’s a drumbeat that I feel, when an idea is speaking to me. When I am embodied in the idea, there’s just a spark – we can see it, we feel it. I was put on this earth to light fires, and I only want to work with brands that light fires in people’s lives.
Before you pitch me your brand make sure you…
…Can identify some actions that go along with the values in your brand deck. Sometimes we forget what the actions are revealing. I also want to work with women, Latinas, Black and Brown people. That’s not a trend, that’s a requirement.
If you were the CMO of a big brand, what’s the first thing you would do?
I would get rid of 60-minute meetings. What you can tell me in 60 you can tell me in 20. You just need to figure that out and speak faster.
Who do you still want to work with?
Folks who inspire me like Dwayne Johnson, what he does with [his production company] Seven Bucks behind the scenes really made the connection for me of what he’s doing in people’s homes. He said, always maintain that relationship and connection with your audience. There’ something really visceral and organic about that connection, and I really took that to heart.
How do you prioritise?
We should say no to more things. It’s either a hell yes or a no thank you. The no’s protect the yeses. We live in place now where that’s understandable on paper, but we say it with guilt. Time is such a valuable piece of it all – delegating, managing to a team, having support, having a chief of staff – we ned to have realistic conversations about how we are managing our days. I claw back time and try to be really intentional. I pay attention to how I’m moving, feeling, sleeping. If we aren’t taking care of the basics, we can’t claw it back.
How do you manage different global audiences?
I don’t care about going viral. I read a think piece about the ‘1,000 committed fans’ – that’s wealth, that will translate, that’s a fly wheel. I am thankful that as I widen the aperture of who I am, I can go into spaces that might not have expected me, and audiences come along with me for the journey. I learn as I go, as long as the kernel of the idea is in my lived experience, that passion and excitement speaks through new cultures and geographies. And if I’m launching a new product in a new geography, I try and be mindful of how it’s going to land.
How do you stay authentic and creative with your content when brands want to include all their messaging in the first few seconds?
Your reputation is a form of love. Never have a single word out of your mouth, scripted or otherwise, that gives you ‘the ick’. Sometimes it’s about getting playful – your audience knows what it is when it’s a brand deal. And remember the running shoes are the by-product. What I care about when someone is lacing up to run is how they are going to feel when they are getting ready for victory.