Surrounded by runners? The brands are doing something right.
(Image credit: Nike)
Every weekend morning when I’m taking my dog (Boris the Blade) on his morning walk, we are met by the same thing: a group of 20 to 30 predominantly middle-aged men and women running towards us.
And it's not just one group. As Boris stops and smells the exact same street corner he did just hours ago to decide if it's worthy of his lifted leg, several of these breathable-material, carbon-plated herds will swoosh by us.
I don’t know if this is a phenomenon that you recognise in your home town, but in Stockholm the running boom has just continued to grow exponentially, and there are no signs of it slowing down. Looking at the world of branding, maybe the reason for this development is not only a love for the run. Could it be down to some fantastic marketing including some of the best adverts of the 2020s?
One of the biggest marketing stories of last year was Nike's decline, ultimately resulting in the firing of its CEO. One of the reasons for Nike’s descent from the sports brand throne was an over-investment in “performance marketing” relative to brand building, combined with direct-to-customer-focused go-to-market strategy, which hurt Nike’s strong relationship with retailers.
Something that got less attention was that a few years prior, the same thing happened at main rival Adidas, which invested 77% of its marketing budget in direct response (performance) marketing, but could only attribute those investments to 35% of its revenue.
Meanwhile, brand investments that only got 23% of the marketing budget achieved 65% of revenue. Between 2019 and 2023, Adidas was the only major sports brand to see a drop in global market share.
As big running brands failed at their own game, new players emerged (such as Hooka and On) and started grabbing real chunks of market share. Advanced measurement solutions which accurately track marketing effectiveness, such as Funnel, could have helped the two sports giants avoid some of these missteps, but it's easy to be wise in hindsight.
In 2025, it seems like the big brands have finally realised their self-inflicted injuries. Nike went back to its roots, doing real brand-led communication and focusing on that 'Winning is not for everyone'.
Adidas abandoned its 20-year-old 'Impossible Is Nothing' concept and launched the much more encouraging 'You Got This'. New Balance wants to emphasise the diversity in running, encouraging you to Run Your Way.
On Running partnered up with unexpected endurance ambassador Elmo, claiming that 'Soft Wins'. Asics had Logan Roy…sorry, Bryan Cox, give a motivational speech to desk jockeys to Move Your Mind, focusing on mental health.
And Puma decided to Go Wild and revitalised an old banger that is far from the adrenaline high rectification we had gotten accustomed to in the running category.
Apart from some great high-value advertising, what can other brands learn from the development in the running category?
I think there are three major takeaways.
01. Differentiation matters
(Image credit: Nike)
The obvious learning is that it pays off to invest in a brand, and you cannot only do performance marketing. But let’s not go there, I know you are smarter than that. However, the learning from the examples above is that differentiation still matters.
Marketing in the running/sports category has, as a result of the total dominance of Nike, been very performance-normative. 'Just Doing It' defined every sports brand. But looking at the ads above, it is clear that running brands are now trying to differentiate their positioning relative to one another.
If you follow the marketing discourse on LinkedIn, you will be familiar with the debate of Distinctiveness versus Differentiation. In one ring corner, you have the Mental Availability purist arguing that there is no such thing as differentiation.
And in the other corner, you’ll have more of the Bothist arguing that differentiation has an important role to play. (Let’s just ignore the people that still believe a USP is the most important thing for your brand – we have moved on from believing anything can be unique). I would argue the case for bothism, and I think the running category will prove this.
Adidas shares have risen 160% since 2022, sales increased by 12%, and the brand has started taking market share from Nike. In the first quarter of 2025, Adidas' investments in “impactful marketing” were up by 14% to €746m.
By looking at nearly 10,000 brands, market researchers Kantar backs the emphasis on differentiation, finding those that stand notably apart from competitors are four times more likely to grow (Kantar BrandZ, 2023).
02. Brand-driven pricing power
(Image credit: adidas)
The second learning is in realising that brand is your number one weapon in pricing power.
Looking at the average price for running shoes on an inflation-adjusted basis between 2010-2023, the price increase is not that different from the increase in general footwear (about 2.9% for running vs 2.63% in footwear). However, where it gets interesting is looking at the upper part of the running shoe category.
In 2016, Nike introduced the first carbon-plated running shoe, the Nike Vaporfly 4%. It started a revolution and the beginning of a new era of running product innovation. This chart from the amazing people at RunRepeat shows that the price premium a brand can ask for a carbon-plated road shoe compared to a normal road shoe is 65% higher. As an example, the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 2 is priced at a whopping $500 USD.
Today, carbon-plated shoes are not just for top athletes but represent $12.2bn in global sales in 2023. It is this premium running gear that is driving the growth of the category. The average sales of running shoes decreased by 2%, whereas premium gear increased by 14%.
Running brands have understood that consumers are willing to pay significant premiums to get the latest performance-enhancing innovation, and having a brand that is trusted to deliver on this is key. The emergence of Hooka from a niche brand to one of the leading category players is a clear example of this, and Puma, in my opinion, is the brand to watch right now.
One of my favourite examples of this is Stockholm-based Yo Running Club, which was founded by artist and creator Daniel Adams Ray and whose members include Sweden’s most well-renowned men's fashion editor, Daniel Lindström.
Yo is a bunch of really high-performance amateur athletes that really achieve great results, but never at the compromise of a contemporary urban style. Communication on Instagram has high production value, and Adidas is frequently featured as a sponsor of the club.
While running clubs create a sense of belonging and community that many people are missing in their digital lives, they also offer a great opportunity for running brands to build a form of authenticity that the traditional sponsoring of professional athletes cannot achieve.
And in here lies the learning: the successful brands of today combine aspiration with authenticity. Your brand needs to be visible both in a big, global context and at grassroots levels. Enabling and being associated with communities is a great lesson for all brands, independent of category.
So define a clear position to differentiate relative to your category, leverage your brand for pricing power, and be an enabler of communities to build authenticity for your brand. Who knows, soon you might start seeing business PBs.
