Under Armour Rejigs Marketing Plan; Bets Big On In-House Branded Content

Sportswear brand Under Armour is poised to intensify its Branded Content spends with a new global platform and a dive into the world of podcasting.

Its latest campaign, ‘The Only Way is Through’— created in-house— ambitiously aims to pivot the sports brand as one that truly understands athletes’ drive to break through physical and mental setbacks.

It features the brand’s roster of endorsers— including American basketball star Stephen Curry, swimming legend Michael Phelps and Chinese volleyball world champion Zhu Ting—in a pacy film showcasing their athletic prowess.

Prior to this campaign, Under Armour marketing campaigns tended to focus on their technical innovations and fashion trends, instead of placing their star athletes in the limelight.

Speaking to trade publication The Drum, the company’s VP of Global Brand Creative, Brian Boring, reiterated, “In the last few years we’ve thrown a lot of different campaigns out there and we’re thrown a lot of different messaging out into the marketplace,” said Boring. “A lot of it was product focused and a lot of it was category focused, and we didn’t really have one centralised theme that all of our athletes and out brand could rally around.

“That’s something we’d done really well in the past and we wanted to get back to that. We wanted to make sure we had one central idea that all of our storytelling could ladder off of and just get back to what makes us really strong.”

The moves have come alongside a C-suite reshuffle with former chief operating officer Patrik Frisk serving as chief executive from this month after incumbent Kevin Plank stepping back into the role of chairman and brand chief.

Against the backdrop of Under Armour’s Q319 experiencing a 4% drop in North America—which was seen as a sign of the brand struggling against rivals Nike and Adidas—Frisk plans to refresh the brand with a 360-degree approach to marketing.

Earlier in a November meeting with investors, Frisk said, “We’ll go and market ourselves across every channel that we need to market ourselves across to make sure that we’re increasing consideration with the consumer. It will be a holistic approach to both upper-funnel marketing and also sports moments marketing, where you’ll see Under Armour show up where our athletes show up.”

Under Armour has put significant investment behind ‘The Only Way is Through’, flying teams around the globe to capture its pool of athletes in their natural environments and cashing out on a wide-ranging media plan.

Alongside out-of-home and OTT streaming buys, the brand is trialling new formats in order to get consumers engaging deeper with its athletes and – consequently – the brand. It’s launching its first podcast with iHeart Radio, which will act as a platform for elite athletes to tell stories of their training success.

The series, which will launch as an eight-parter, will be hosted by seasoned host and journalist Cal Fussman. Boring hopes the format will offer up a “captive audience” and allow the brand to experiment with long-form storytelling for the first time.

Similarly, Under Armour has brokered a deal with The Players’ Tribune, where the brand’s stars will write about their experiences in sport. It’s also increasing its investment in experiential in order to give consumers better access to its athletes, trainers, grassroots and collegiate partners.

“And we’re doing some unique, longer format storytelling through YouTube,” said Boring. “So, we have many different formats and lots of different content. It’s going to sustain throughout the year – it’s big, it’s powerful and we’re really excited about it.”

Over in Asia, Under Amour’s sponsorship has taken a slight dip from  US$5.8m in 2018 to slightly under US$5.1m last year. In terms of deal value, most deals are still relatively modest – in the US$25k to US$200k range – barring its partnerships with NBA China (US$1.5m+) and Japanese football club Omiya Ardija (US$1.2m+).  This figure is likely to see a slight spike as the brand expands on its global campaigns.