✍️#10: THE SPACE RACE: Comparing ON to BANDIT in the content overload economy.
ON, AMAZON, and BANDIT all went to space in April, but how is BANDIT winning the battle of authenticity and impact in sport?
We’ve heard for quite some time now that brand is stronger than ever as a differentiator — that the environment created by a brand for people to identify with is paramount. Simply making good product is “table stakes” as our globalized running economy has increasingly better access to manufacturing partners. As many know, brand is a complex ecosystem, or recipe, which relies on elements of visual language, copywriting, experiences, identifiers, ambassadors/athletes, etc.
Unsurprisingly, content is a massive lever for many brands to express themselves and build this universe. The sheer amount of platforms, channels, and content pieces is so saturated, it takes near herculean efforts to stand out and some brands are turning heads consistently.
ON’S RECENT CAMPAIGNS
Soft Wins
Starting around the Super Bowl, ON debuted it’s “soft wins” campaign they’ve integrated across their audience. For the mass audience awareness play, Elmo and Roger Federer had a cute volleyed exchange where Elmo asked Roger why his shoes had the letters “QC” on them — a cute way to address the uninitiated audience who does not understand the logo without alienating that audience. Elmo and Rich Roll addressed a slightly more core fitness/wellness audience to discuss soft wins in a staged podcast environment to validate the concept in the arena in sport/activity. Elmo and Yared Neguse addressed an even more core run audience to introduce soft wins and reclaim the “run slow to run fast” narrative within the ON universe. Further, they’ve fully rolled out the campaign to integrate within articles with OAC coach Dathan Ritz to address the core runner, run influencer campaigns, group run programming worldwide — all of which ties into messaging around their footwear and brand.
Zone Dreamers
More recently, Zendaya’s face and new elfish ears have likely graced your social feeds. This futuristic, outer-space dream world is ON’s first truly integrated campaign with their global ambassador, Zendaya. We see her take on a dream world of fitness and adventure with her companions as they seem to align with the ON mission to “ignite the human spirit through movement.” This campaign features the new Cloudzone shoe and their Studio Knit bodywear line and a way to drive emails with the promise of “getting ON and Zendaya news to your inbox” if you sign up.
BANDIT’S RECENT CAMPAIGNS
ASICS Shoe Collab
Bandit and Asics deepened their relationship with their first collaborative shoe. Building upon the joint equity of their relationship of several years and dropping their first joint apparel collaboration at NYC Marathon of 2024, we received the FULL BUFFET with the Novablast 5 launch. Apparel. A Shoe. A Space Station. A Flight to Space. Each element of their creative focused on space as a means to express the feeling of acceleration, innovation, and “launch” with a slew of content pieces to bring us into their extra-terrestrial dream.
Down Bad - Boston Marathon Collection
Days before the Boston Marathon, and on the heels of the shoe launch, Bandit dropped their credo for the Boston Marathon: Down Bad. A little Zillenial-slang heavy, but a way to also reference the challenge of punishing terrain and conditions of the Boston Marathon: a race fraught with stories of commemoration and commiseration. Cupping the Bandit logo into the back of the runner primes the viewer both in the realm of Bandit, but also that “optimizer” runner who spares no expense for recovery and preparation. Running on a DECLINE treadmill precariously propped up on cinderblocks primes you to think of the notorious downhill of the Boston’s first half of the race. A bandaid on a nipple and a bloody knee on the course primes you to think of the sacrifice and punishment associated with this race.
London Marathon Collection
Bandit’s London Marathon teaser and capsule feels culturally driven by the classic football culture of the nation. The font, the crests, the materials, the designs and patters — even down to the effigy in the promo video. There’s a parallel to this prayer-like ceremony for good fortune on gameday for the most devout football fans in the UK and it transfers to this runner’s prayer for good fortune on race day.
HOW DOES BANDIT WIN IN COMPARISON?
Yes — we can say that Bandit and ON are playing different games because of scale and positioning. From an Instagram perspective, Bandit speaks to 150k+ worldwide fans who aspire to an intersection of core running and style. By comparison, ON speaks to a 2.6M worldwide audience across tennis, fitness, running, and lifestyle. There’s a challenge of scale and balancing the audience for sure. From a campaign strategy perspective, Bandit and ON are both ambitiously creating respectively large campaigns to support their own storytelling — and one may say that each campaign is relatively unrelated to the next.
HOWEVER, from Day 1: Bandit has cemented itself authentically in a visual storytelling lens to connect product, brand, art, and style at each juncture. Yes, they launched a spring campaign with a contemporary dancer in a vestibule. Yes, they launched a travel collection in the TWA Hotel in a capsule called Bandit Air to support their “World Tour.” Yes, they launched a soccer-inspired collection with a futsal tournament. Yes, they launched their new store location with a college-football-style press conference. The point being is that they have a history of taking creative risks on the fringes of sport and culture references and built a reputation of being a brand that creates complex campaigns to tickle the brain of that audience.
Conversely, ON produced two massive brand campaigns in a short period of time and amplified their distribution to match is global audience’s scale. It’s impressive! This emphasis on global campaign visual expression and integration with Soft Wins and Zone Dreamers feels new and, as a result, may make these campaigns feel oddly in competition. When we’re transported into the Elmo universe to remind ourselves that Soft Wins matter and then into a futuristic space world a month later, it’s just a bit disorienting. Yes, these campaigns address different audiences and different modalities of run and fitness respectively, but I can only hope that we see either: a) more depth in these respective campaigns over time; or b) more frequently produced campaigns on this scale, in order to feel more centered within their brand direction. In other words, ON has the ability to make this visual campaign direction feel authentic to them and easier to understand with repetition, depth, and consistency over time.
But for now, Bandit holds the crown of campaign visual storytelling and when they go to space, it makes sense. Other brands may need to put in more work to earn that.
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I would have loved to sit in on the ON meeting right after bandit released their space content