The first week of September saw Virgin Money London Marathon sportswear partner New Balance roll out a new 2021 race campaign called ‘Rep Yours’ which promotes its race collection and acts as a call-to-action to democratize running, celebrate diversity, empowerment and inclusivity by encouraging every runner to consider their run purpose and use this to motivate themselves throughout training and beyond.
Working in conjunction with community run crew ‘Run The Boroughs’, the official footwear and clothing sponsor of the Virgin Money London Marathon launched the campaign as part of its wider aim to democratise running and it seeks to empower runners to explore the reasons why they run.
The multi-channel creative focuses on two crew runners – Cece and Shalarm – who tell their own personal running stories as a means of encouraging others to own their relationship with running.
Personal trainer and run leader Shalarm uses passion for running to connect with and inspire likeminded people and to encourage more people in his borough to run for physical and mental health reasons.
While Cece uses running as a form of therapy and champions the mental health benefits running provides: she began to take running seriously after her father died in 2019 and found it helped her to manage and process grief.
The creative encourages runners to join the movement by following @NBRunning and to join the @RunTheBoroughs community on Instagram.
The marketing push also sees New Balance reveal and promote its 2021 Virgin Money London Marathon training, raceday and footwear collection: a race-related tool-kit of a range designed to keep runners confident and comfortable in the run up to and on race day.
The footwear range includes the Fresh Foam 1080v11 London Edition, FuelCell Rebel v2 London Edition and the FuelCell RC Elite which come in bold colourways designed to capture the energy and excitement of race day.
The 2021 Virgin Money London Marathon New Balance clothing collection is promoted as the largest to date and spans all weather training gear (including the staple marathon jacket, t-shirts, shorts and leggings) in a vivid blue colour inspired by the River Thames with the collection designed to pay homage to the city of London.
Comment:
This campaign is built on the understanding that people run for a wide variety of different reasons: often purposeful and personal and that many runners are representing their family, community and themselves.
This year’s work follows on from 2020’s ‘Real Runners’ film series and 2019’s award-winning branded ‘The Runaway’ pub activation.
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