Love affair: sports + fashion
Sports marketing + fashion brands = 💘
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I hope everyone’s having a ‘Challengers’ summer, not a ‘Saltburn’ one. For the ones in London, I hope you enjoyed the two seconds of sun. I’m personally enjoying the pouring rain. But as soon as the sun’s out, so are the people. Sports season and the sun go hand in hand (which is something I never understood, personally, because the sweat? Ew, but that’s just me). Let’s talk about how it’s being used in marketing because I’m telling you it’s going to be the next big thing.
Summer of love? Try summer of sports
Listen, if you want a sordid love affair in summer that’ll leave you in ruins for the rest of the year, you can’t have that. Everyone’s at a pub watching the matches from Wimbledon to the Euros to the Olympics. Even I indulged in the cricket and Euros finals, and I understand the appeal (I don’t think it was ever coming home, though, luv). Not only can you find a potential summer fling in the world of sports (I know it’s contradictory to my initial statement, but I’m just adding artistic flair), but the brands have a treasure trove for marketing opportunities.
Sporting events have always been massive advertising and marketing magnets. We talked about it in one of our earlier newsletters, where we looked at Marlboro and F1, which you should definitely go read. But the point is, in recent years, sports have attracted a lot of audiences. My prediction is that rugby is going to be the next big thing solely because of THAT ONE rugby account that posts the players practising because that is excellent marketing. Tap into that early and grab that market share. But if you don’t know how to use these events to your brand’s advantage, let me help you.
Marketing Olympics
The world has become a colosseum, and the brands are gladiators (side note: No Church in the Wild goes crazy in the Gladiator 2 trailer; argue with the wall). Sports and advertising have gone hand in hand for a long, long time, but it’s only recently that they’ve become more visually appealing, so to speak.
Athletes aren’t just people who play sports anymore. They’re celebrities with influence. Thanks to social media, especially fan edits and also more direct access, fans feel closer to them. F1’s favourite traumatised driver, Max Verstappen, has been in Heineken’s latest ad campaign, ‘The Best Driver,’ which advocates for no drinking and driving. It’s such a clever campaign. The slogan for the campaign is ‘The best driver is the one who is not drinking’, which highlights how drivers during night-outs are often chosen based on whether they’re good drivers and not if they’ve had a drink. The campaign humorously tackles a huge issue, chooses an F1 driver, and plays on that.
Even more recent is SIR Lewis Hamilton being signed as the newest Dior ambassador and guest designer. Does the brand have anything to do with racing? No. But fashion and F1 (and other sporting events) have a relationship in general, which is another story, but as I said, he’s a celebrity and a fashion icon in his own right, so this absolutely makes sense for him to do.
Okay, but let’s meet the gladiators and understand who will win and how they’ll win because like Paul Mescal in the Gladiator 2 trailer said, this is about survival. First, we’ve got Blank Street, the hottest new coffee shop with the best blueberry matcha ever. This it-girl coffee spot recently had a Padel pop-up in London at Battersea Power Station. See, I never got to go, but I did try their new summer drinks (for research, obviously), and they are, in fact, worth the hype. I did not know about Padel before this pop-up, so this shows how brands and sports have a symbiotic relationship.
Loewe and Gucci both embraced a Challengers summer, albeit in different ways. Loewe was the go-to brand for Zendaya’s press tour for her widely talked-about movie, while Gucci employed tennis pro player Jannik Sinner for their campaign. This was right around the Roland Garros tournament, and the tennis hype stayed well until the end of the Wimbledon championship.
The takeaways
So, the takeaway from this should be that the biggest players in sports marketing are the fashion brands. They go hand in hand. There are brands SPECIFICALLY FOR SPORTS, so naturally, they’ll have the largest share and the most leverage in their creative direction for campaigns. But as we’ve seen Blank Street make the most out of emerging sports, more brands will try and follow suit.
The important thing with sports marketing is that it’s literally about selling a lifestyle rather than a product (although that’s the case with most marketing, but it’s more apparent with sports marketing). You use a sport or an element of that sport to sell a lifestyle. Say golf is a sport generally associated with wealth and tennis, which is why most luxury brands use them to sell their sports lines. Something like football (yes, it’s football, not soccer) is more accessible and more for the masses, so brands like Adidas, Pumas and Nike would tap into that.
So, if you want to incorporate sports in your campaigns, consider how your product helps athletes or consumers and then sell a lifestyle around it. Athletes are the new symbol of glamour because of their newfound celebrity status, so selling a luxury lifestyle becomes more effortless. Use a more storytelling approach, build a cinematic universe, and go wild.
Btw if you’re wondering how we stay up to date with trends and news 24/7… It’s Volv. It’s a Snapchat-backed social news app. They curate the most important, viral, and interesting content into 9-second stories that you can just scroll through like social media. Makes it pretty easy. 👀
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the next issue covering latest marketing campaigns and strategies winning over Gen Z. Any questions/suggestions as to what we should cover next? Reach out to us and we’re always here to chat!
— Brought to you by Shaurya, Trends Reporter at The Z Link