✳️UTMB, the Hottest New Travel Influencer
A Trailmix of news and opinions on the business of trail running
Hey pals,
The response to last week’s paid subscription announcement was astonishing. Very much not expected, so thank you all. The 25% offer is still available till 7pm tonight, but you can subscribe whenever.
I had a couple of pieces of news i couldn’t fit into last week’s issue so I’m back again this week covering UTMB’s live streaming calendar announcement and the recent move to the mental side of running in some brand’s marketing.
Hope you have a great week,
Matt
UTMB, the Hottest New Travel Influencer
A couple of weeks ago UTMB released their livestreaming calendar, 12 events across the year that will receive full video coverage from UTMB and distributed to all their broadcast partners (Outside, DAZN, IQiYi and L’Equipe). The full list is as such:
UTMB have all of their world major’s covered, but then the remaining events were less chosen by UTMB, more provided by the local authorities.
Antoine Aubour, Director of Communications, Marketing and Media, UTMB Group, explained to me last week that the events that get livestream coverage is determined by whether the local authorities can cover the cost of production. "Most of the times, funding comes from local authority, governments or destinations, basically, that are keen to pay and to find the budget to allow such a live productions” Antoine explained. Effectively UTMB reached out to all relevant local parties around their 50+ events to help pay for production, but they were only able to fund 12 in total. For my US readers, the lack of funding was cited as the reason for not broadcasting from Canyons this year.
This year UTMB have also built out their UTMB Live set up, allowing for comments and additional data points during each race. What has intrigued me about this play is that UTMB have invested heavily in developing their own platform, whist building out their broadcast partnerships too, when the two effectively compete against each other for the same viewership audience.
Antoine stresses that the two are complimentary and that UTMB’s end goal is to meet their audiences where they are. “Our media strategy is to make UTMB available on multiple platforms, one on our own platform, UTMB Live, our OTT platform” Antoine stated “the aim is also to meet audiences where they are."
However, Antoine did concede that they will ultimately be competitive “This is a balance. When we sign with the broadcaster, they know that they have no exclusivity on the content screening. They know that they always compete”. For partners, who get the content for free, the benefit is simply having the events to showcase, bringing in new potential customers and giving current users a reason to keep coming back. For UTMB the benefits of working with these partners is both the new audiences they reach but also the additional promotion they receive. “it's a combination of promotion and distribution which is key for us. If they don't promote, we don't work with them, it's key for us."
Funding for UTMB’s livestreaming essentially comes from UTMB positioning itself as a destination advertisement – a way to demonstrate to viewers the aesthetic and cultural delights of a specific locale. In other words, a travel influencer. This didn’t quite work as planned for Chianti whose venerated vineyards usually awash with vibrant greens and perfect sunshine were replaced by pewter skies and mud caked vines; vistas more common to us folk across the channel. However, that didn’t put off viewers who were there to see the Killian, Jim and Vincent battle royale for a golden ticket play out. After the mud had set, Chianti broke UTMB’s livestreaming records, outside of UTMB Mont Blanc, quadrupling the average viewership, according to their press team.
The reliance on tourism dollars to fund the production of the livestreams is evidence that race fees and endemic sponsorships alone are not enough to cover the growth of livestreaming in trail running. There’s a question over the sustainability of livestreaming for UTMB, and for all race series’, when there is currently no monetary value attached to the footage, and when the biggest events company in the sport has to rely on the tourism industry to fund it’s expansion.
UTMB is playing the long game - hoping the livestreams bring in more runners to their events, raising income from race fees, and creating a stronger value proposition for sponsors to hopefully increase their rates too. For now, they must lean into showing panoramic shots of French landscapes and reeling off local stories to help keep the UTMB Live show on the road.
Running Brands Compete for the Mind over body
As a kid who grew up with the internet pre-YouTube, I had a strange Proustian moment when hearing the soundtrack to the new Puma campaign.
The song is a twist on the 'Because I got high' song by Afroman that gained notoriety amongst the early internet generation through Bebo, Tumblr and Piczo pages in the early noughties. Puma have adapted the song to centre it around the runners high in an effort to position themselves at the intersection of 'joy' and 'running', according to their Global Vice President of Brand and Marketing Richard Teyssier. The purpose of the campaign is to claim the crown of this supposed gap in the market.
As someone who has interacted with the Puma brand a grand total of zero times, i have no idea whether they're actually 'joyful' shoes to run in, but Puma are not alone in refocusing their positioning to be about the mental side of running.
ASICS have recently been leaning into their brand acronym (Anima Sana In Corpore Sano - a sound mind in a sound body) to drive home the mindfulness side to running.
At a recent conference in New York, Gary Raucher, ASICS' CMO, stated that “Brands either talk about winning and work with elite athletes that are at the top of their game and support them to win and celebrate victory, or they talk about the fact that winning is hard work, and we all need to put in the effort...We like to say that we're a caregiver brand … Of course we like to win, but we believe the physical and mental well-being of our athletes and our consumers is more important than any trophy, medal or podium position.”
Consequently, ASICS have positioned themselves as a brand that stands for "movement for the mind" underpinned by the belief that their "real purpose is to uplift how we are feeling".
ASICS has been deploying this strategy for a few years now, and year after year have broken their own sales records with one of the best profit margins in the industry.
Both Puma and ASICS are moving away from winning is everything mentality to appeal to vast majority of runners who run for fun. I'll throw my hand up and say I run because it keeps me sane, not because, like the Pokemon theme tune, i want to be the very best.
These changes in positioning soften the brand ethos and let them dial up and down their running credentials depending on the audience and environment they're talking in. Ultimately its this flexibility that allows them to cater to people who buy running shoes for general fitness in the gym or just moving outside.
The risk is that by diluting their competitive positioning, it means they could lose runners as they begin to consider running further or faster.
Yesterday's running brands used to have a 'win at all costs' attitude, today brands are starting to compete for the mind.
If we had a group chat…
Trumps tariffs have hit the global economy like a frying pan to the face. As mentioned previously, running retail brands are most vulnerable with manufacturing concentrated in China and Vietnam, countries who both were hit hardest by the pan. Most stocks took a beating with Nike (-8.9%), On (-10.2%), Adidas (-10.7%), Puma (9.7%) all taking some the biggest losses they’ve ever had in a 5 day period. Estimates are flying around about the impact, UBS saying the cost of shoes will go up 10%, Nike’s profits could be cut by 10-25%, Men’s Health is encouraging people to panic buy - the news cycle is in pandemonium territory. The companies that will feel this the worst are the smaller brands who don’t have as big a margin to cushion the blow, who will have to increase their prices to afford the new costs, putting pressure on a burgeoning retail start-up scene. I’ve already spoke to a few founders who say it’s effecting margins and their negotiations with distributors. Lloyd Vogel, CEO of Garage Gear, a cottage backpacker gear retailer, confirmed on LinkedIn that he’s seeing the same impact across smaller outdoor brands. If you’re a founder effected by the tariffs, get in touch at matt@wearetrailmix.com to let me know how it’s effecting you. The news cycle will focus on the big brands, but the ones that we need to support the most will be the brands who don’t have a stock ticker charting their slow decline.
Let’s have a bit of fun. Here’s a crossword on a few of the goings on in running over the past couple of weeks. It’s a small trial one to see if you lot are actually secret Wordle addicts. (Click on the image to try it out)
