Under Armour Speaks on New Campaign

Under Armour unveiled the next evolution of its RULE YOURSELF global marketing campaign last night at an event in East London led by SVP, global brand marketing, Adrienne Lofton.

Manchester United and Dutch footballer Memphis Depay, who stars in one of three new spots, was also in attendance and took part in a Q&A session on his training regime, which forms the basis of the creative.

The campaign – which also features a spot fronted by members of the USA national women’s gymnastics team and a short film slated for March with Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps – underscores the brand’s vision of training as the focal point of an athlete’s everyday life. Driven by the central theme of JOMO (the joy of missing out) and the tagline 'It’s What You Do in the Dark That Puts You in the Light', the stance highlights the sacrifices these athletes make – and the elation they feel – when wholly dedicated to training for their sport.

 
All three films were created in partnership with Droga5 and honour the commitment to the 24/7 grind that each athlete pushes through in order to succeed when their moment in the spotlight comes.

When you initially launched RULE YOURSELF, why did you decide to focus on the training rather than game day performance?

There were a couple of reasons why we launched the first iteration of rule yourself when and the way we did. Under Armour training is the biggest category within the entire company and often is the biggest category in sports and we wanted to reinvent what we stand for in training. Training and Under Armour started from the beginning, so in 1996 it was American football and training and it was just time for reinvention.

When we thought about the insight and what we thought athletes needed to hear, is that it’s about you being the sum of your work. Some days you will wake up and hate that it’s 5am and you’ve got to get up and go, some days you’ll have the best practices of your life and it’s the sum of all those things that ultimately give you the win and make you the best you can be.

Tell us about the first part of the campaign…

We knew we’d do two instalments – one at the end of last year and one launching now. The first step out was figuring out how you create this visual identity that is unforgettable and is a metaphor to the story of the sum. So the repetition and multiplicity idea intended to show young athletes that there are millions of Stephens (Curry) that have showed up on millions of days and that’s why he’s MVP and has won the national championship for the NBA trophy.

There are a million days where Jordan Spieth’s stroke is off but he comes back the next day and does it again. So the idea of inspiration behind the scenes of repetition because repetition can be a not so sexy story if you don’t tell it right but that’s the key to being an incredible athlete and we wanted to show that to people all over the world.

Did the athlete want to be seen in that light?

Yes, our athletes are literally part of our family so we’re able to sit down and talk to them about them who they are. Misty (Copeland) has an incredible story about how she started late at 16 and didn’t have the body to be a ballerina and was African-American. We want to tell their stories because they want to tell their stories. So it allows us to get a peek behind the scenes of their lives and share that with consumers all over the world.

In the second chapter we’ve had a less dramatic approach and more about the deep story of 24/7. When Memphis wakes after he’s gone to bed that guy is preparing to get better. He getting better and he’s delivering and that’s the story we’re telling in the second iteration of the campaign.

And what about selecting the athletes to feature in a particular campaign?

Oh, it’s hard. It’s impossible. We start with the best of the best on the roster. Our MVPs run deep. We sit around the table with Kevin Plank, our founder, and a tight team on the marketing side and we think about who we’re looking to connect with from a consumer perspective, who could go the deepest in telling a particular story whether that’s a global football story, or a women’s story and we have to make a hard choice.

In this case we wanted to tell three different chapters inside the story, one of a legendary brand but with athletes that haven’t yet defined themselves like the US gymnastics team, one of a flat out legend – 22 medals, you can’t be better than Michael Phelps – but what’s very Under Armour about him is that that guy’s busting his gut right now behind the scenes to prepare for the Games. He doesn’t even have to show up but that’s how he lives and shows an unwavering amount of perseverance.

And then there’s Memphis, who’s our next best, our up and comer and when we were thinking about it we have a deep roster of ‘next’. We thought football was an incredible sport to tell our story through because we’re new on the scene there as well. We love the idea of the midpoint – he hasn’t yet stepped out into the light but he will. The tagline on his spot is different from the other two and we’re on that journey with him.

And why did you feel TV spots were the best way to communicate the message?

We’ve launched a couple of different versions of the commercials – there’s the 30-second spot of Memphis, there’s a 30 and a 60 of the US national gymnastics team and we’ll have a 30 and 60 of Phelps in March. But that’s just the start and what we believe in is going deep with content, the ads are the attention getter. The real rub happens in social media where our athletes will push out their #RuleYourself stories and give some of their tips to athletes and really go deep in social, digital and activation so this can really feel 360 and surround us when we least expect it.

Why is it important for a company like Under Armour to continue innovating and push creative boundaries?

I think it’s important to represent the future and the expectations that athletes have of our brand all over the world. We are a brand that’s about making athletes better, focussed on unlocking their human potential but you can’t do that without thinking about the next innovation, brand experience or story that’s going to give you goose bumps. Our brand is full of former athletes who know the feeling of what it is to win and be unique and different. But also what it means to work your ass off for what you’re going after. There’s something really special in handing that down to the next generation. It keeps us being the serial innovators that we are. It’s a joy for us to be the next generation brand on the scene.