You might have seen the coverage (if you were awake at 4.45am on Saturday) of Nike's attempt to break the sub 2hour marathon barrier. Most certainly you will have heard retrospectively and seen that the great Kipchoge was an incredible 26seconds away from breaking the barrier. Coverage available here. My favourite statistic (and easily measurable) is that Kipchoge ran 422 consecutive 100m efforts in 17 seconds, give just one a go today!
Perhaps it was the sun but the local park runs were the busiest I have seen for a while on Saturday morning. There is lots to say about the marketing exercise behind Nike in a B2C context however it really highlighted to me that effective sales and marketing is derived from building a vision and community around your product.
This is no different in B2B and we see this repeatably with successful firms through a range of content execution.
Similar to Nike, to be successful with building a community the 'Hero, Hub, Hygiene' Content Framework (you can download a copy here) is an ideal starting point.
Prior to the event Nike constantly kept their audience (runners) in touch through constant online 'hub' content delivered in a range of social media posts, videos and blogs. Most importantly they utilised the networks and authenticity of their athletes (past and present), technical experts, journalists and my favourite - Kevin Hart. Nike did a great job at the employee advocacy, all sponsored athletes had various content appear on their social channels between Friday - Saturday morning.
The event built up to one large 'hero' piece with the attempt in Monza using the Zoom Vaporfly Elite shoe. There was a range of hygiene content available, mainly around the website here.
The main call to action is unclear, the shoes are still not available to purchase but perhaps simply having Nike's brand discussed in a positive discussion during a tough period for sport and being the first brand I can remember to make mainstream news for a positive reason was enough for now. I would be quite happy if that was my brand.
Call me cynical but it would have almost been a wasted opportunity if Sub2 hours was broken on the weekend behind closed doors at an antisocial time for the western countries to watch online. You need to be in a content strategy for the longterm and I am sure somewhere in Oregon there is a carefully mapped next step.
Why not take a moment today to think about how you can position yourself as the go-to brand or expert in a particular niche within your business field like Nike have? I highly recommend starting with the HHH framework and finding your audience.
Kipchoge was the fastest of the three. With a time of 2 hours and 25 seconds, he not only he beat his personal best of 2:03:05, he also came awfully close to finishing under two hours. And that’s two minutes faster than the world record, which is held by Dennis Kimetto at 2:02:57. Nike will get plenty of mileage from the event. It posted live video of the race on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube — on Facebook, as I write this on Saturday evening, the livestream has been viewed 4.9 million times, and a shorter clip highlighting Kipchoge’s finish has been viewed 4.2 million times. It may seem kind of gross to talk about this achievement as if it was just a marketing campaign. But from Nike’s perspective, that is what it was
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