Leveraging the start of the 2022/3 NFL season, sportswear brand Under Armour and lead football ambassador Tom Brady launched a campaign urging Gen Z athletes to set aside toxic sports star comparisons – to stop comparing themselves to the greats – and instead to ‘Be The Athlete No One Saw Coming’.
Created in-house, the star-studded ad campaign (which also featured endorsers Joel Embiid and Jordan Thompson) dropped 24 hours ahead of the start of the new season on 7 September.
It was led by a hero spot in which legendary quarterback Brady asks actor Morgan Freeman to read out a letter that he wrote to 15-year-old, up-and-coming high school star Husan Longstreet about being labelled ‘the next Tom Brady’. Brady’s note suggests that the recipient tune out the noise, compare themselves to ‘nobody else except the kid in the mirror’ and focus on the unique person they could evolve into in the future.
‘The Athlete No One Saw Coming’ spot also includes the copy line: “Never let them call you the next Tom Brady. The next MVP. The next GOAT. You’re not the next anyone—you’re the next you.”
“Comparisons are no longer used for context, they’re now confused with competition,” the Under Armour campaign announcement states
The ad dropped digitally on 7 September and aired nationally on NBC’s ‘Sunday Night Football’ during the 11 September game between Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Dallas Cowboys.
The football icon also shared the message on social media with his personal Instagram post generating over 200,000 likes at press time.
The athlete apparel company backed up the campaign message through a parallel grant program awarding 10 young athletes aged between 14 and 17 with a $5,000 scholarship that provides ‘access to a performance experience at the Under Armour campus’ and ‘gear for a year’.
Those wishing to apply for the grant are asked to submit a 150-word essay about their sports journey to a bespoke website by 25 September.
“For young athletes today, there are more distractions coming up through the ranks than there were for me,” said Brady in a campaign PR statement. “I wasn’t a prodigy. I had to really work hard to put myself in a position to succeed.”
Comment
Choosing Brady as the spokesperson for the campaign, an NFL super star who boasts more Super Bowl rings than anyone, is a smart approach – not least as he was hardly a certainty for sporting greatness after being drafted 199th overall.
‘Be The Athlete No One Saw Coming’ aims to bridge the generational divide and the campaign sees Under Armour seek to engage with (and support) younger consumers by taking a slightly different approach than most sports brand spots.
Indeed, aspirational youth-oriented messaging have so often encouraged kids to emulate their heroes: think the famous 1990s Gatorade commercial from the ‘90s that features Michael Jordan playing basketball with kids told viewers to “Be Like Mike.”
But here Under Armour is seeking to flip the script on this conventional genre advertising tactic by urging Gen Z to ditch such comparisons and instead keep their energy centered on self-improvement.
Of course, expectations often weigh heavily on many high-performing young athletes and here Under Armour is trying to address this problem which can have an acute impact – especially in the social media era where being put on a comparative pedestal is so often followed by pressure, under performance and critical toxicity.
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