✳️ Lululemon Went Further, But Not For Ultrarunning’s Sake

On Lululemon’s ‘Further’ event

Hey pals,

For 6 days last week I couldn’t turn on instagram without being bombarded with an explosion of coral. Thanks to Lululemon’s ‘Further’ event, I’m sure you all experienced the same thing.

After the coral haze had subsided, i spent a bit of time this week digesting the context and potential impact of this event. With so much investment the event will definitely make a difference too Lululemon’s bottom line, but I’m not sure it will change ultrarunning.

Hope you enjoy, as always I’d love to hear your thoughts and perspectives in the comments or simply replying to this email :)

Matt

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Very few brand activations get remembered. It’s often the absurd (Red Bull Stratos: sending a man to jump out of a plane in space, because.) or the daring (Nike’s Breaking2: go to extreme lengths to have Eliud Kipchoge try break the two hour marathon time) that stick out. Otherwise they’re forgotten as soon as they’re over, remembered only as an awkward event a brand put on who supplied you with a cold salad and depressing sandwich in exchange for your face in the photos and edited words of enjoyment.

‘Further’, the event Lululemon hosted this week, will likely be remembered, not for the race itself or the records broken, but the vision and energy invested into women’s running (and for the colour coral).

As always with these things, i won’t mention the results here, you can go to any running website for that, I’m more interested in the ‘so what’ side of it. There’s a lot to say about the event, so let’s structure some thoughts into punchy lines.

Lululemon does not care about ultrarunning.

Strong start, but let me explain.

There was no official reasoning given for why 6 days. Abby Levine in her exceptional article was told it had historical significance in multi-day ultras, but doesn’t explain why choose ultrarunning in the first place.

Here’s my guess:

• An ultramarathon was chosen because of the enormous challenge it signifies. They needed something of a great magnitude to attract attention, a la Breaking2, an ultramarathon does that.

• They chose a backyard-style race because of the accessibility to all abilities. They’re selling a line of products to all women, not only women that run hundreds of miles for breakfast.

Which brings me to the point about ultrarunning - it’s too niche a sport to create products specifically for. Maybe later after they created more of a portfolio of running apparel and equipment. But for now, Lululemon care about what ultramarathons symbolise and their accessibility, not the sport.

Lululemon do care about being associated with women’s running.

This event was about creating strong associations between women’s running and Lululemon.

I can see the presentation now:

Problem to solve: Lululemon already has a range of running apparel and shoes but isn’t thought of as a running brand as much as competitors

Job to be done: Cement Lululemon’s perception as a running brand through an impactful memorable event

Why an event? Brand activations at scale are great ways of driving short term sales but when conducted effectively create memories that consumers tap into when thinking about a category. I.e. when you’re thinking about buying leggings for running, you think of Lululemon.

The other reason - Lululemon’s Chief Brand Officer, Nikki Neuburger, lead the Breaking2 initiative at Nike. Having seen the impact, knowing the investment and learned the lessons, doing another large scale event made sense.

This was an ‘ultra for the instagram age’ and RDs should take note.

Everything about this event was exceptionally tailored to make an impact on instagram and TikTok. Influencers were their primary method for distributing the content for this event so everything had to be visual to be memorable.

It’s hard to find a choice around the event that wasn’t chosen because it looks good. The choice to be in a desert when thats not exactly optimal running conditions? For the gram. The cacophony of coral colour co-ordination? For the gram. Dragon fruit for breakfast? For the gram. Even Athlete’s were chosen for their stories but also their ability to turn their experience into hundreds of reels over a six day period.

The visual nature of this was to appeal to a broad female demographic who are more likely to be their news and inspiration from instagram and TikTok than a website or a podcast. It’s easy to say that it was too twee and manicured for ultra audiences who associate Backyards with, well, backyards. But again, ultrarunners weren’t the primary audience for this event, it was every woman who has ever considered starting running.

Lululemon knew every element that went into the event would effect how it is perceived by their target audience. This is no different to how RDs should approach their own events. Building a brand also matters in the events business.

Lululemon won’t know the real ROI of this event. And thats okay.

Measuring the ROI of brand activations is difficult due to the intangible nature of what they’re trying to change.

There will be mentions of a spikey sales uplift that will loosely be tied to the event, super positive social impressions and a larger following, and a pre-post brand study where people say how they think Lululemon are at the forefront of women’s running (if they’re advanced they’ll even by able to forecast sales change based on the correlations between their brand metrics and sales). But it’s all spurious.

Lululemon won’t know if Further had a significant impact on their sales for a long time - thats the nature of brand activities. The point is to follow this up with continuous brand prompts to consumers to maintain that fluffy feeling they have for Lululemon and capitalise on that perception.

The impact on ultramarathon’s growth is equally uncertain…

Female participation in ultrarunning has always been low, covering only 23% of racers globally. It would be fascinating to see if that ratio changes faster than the glacial rate its currently shifting at after this event, but in the grand scheme of things, this event was a drop in the ocean.

The communication strategy was to focus on distribution via social, which for the goal and the audience, that works. The issue is social media is ephemeral by its nature and is doesn’t make as much an memorable impact as other mediums; a flash of coral, then gone forever.

Additionally whilst the scientific legacy the event will leave is a significant step forward for understanding women’s bodies in the sport of running, the translation of that into the everyday reality for runners doing their first Ultramarathon likely won’t enter the mainstream for a few years.

… but for current ultrarunners this event could inspire people to imagine running longer distances.

Megan Roche made a great point on the ‘Some Work, All Play’ podcast around the narrative effect this has on people who are already ultrarunning (link 23:00).

Seeing all the athletes with a range of abilities running 100+ miles gives you the confidence that you too can run that distance - ‘we are all more capable than we can possibly perceive’ as David Roche put it.

‘Further’ is unlikely to convert someone who runs Parkruns on a Saturday to run 30+ miles, but for those already insane enough to consider ultra’s it stretches your imagination to considering what’s possible.