Hello, friends –

 

I hope this finds you well. Can you believe it's almost Memorial Day? Time to chill the rosé and stock up on sunscreen.

 

This issue of The Pour is inspired by a recent trip to Iceland, where I got to see my husband place 11th in a marathon. Reader, please don't be too impressed…there were a total of 56 runners. It was a delightful morning, culminating in homemade waffles and whipped cream at a local rec center, and a nice man named Olufar even drove us back to our hotel. Long live community-run sporting events!

 

But I digress.

 

There's always inspiration to be found in travel, and don't sleep on a trip to a foreign grocery store. We'll also look at a few running brands to see what we can learn from how they take on the behemoths of the category, and touch base with a former client on how CMOs of the future will succeed.

 

As we look ahead to Q3 (!!!), we do have some limited capacity for new branding projects, so do be in touch. So far this year we've been deep in financial services, ad tech, and hospitality. Truly, we love a bit of diversity!

 

Cheers,

Laura

 

I've been playing with the Cider color palette lately – ever so slightly, and so far only in our presentation template. But my recent trip to Iceland was such a source of inspiration for bold new color combinations. Maybe you'll feel the same way?

 

Itching to put some combination of clover and goldenrod and vanilla and indigo and burnt sienna into a client palette sometime soon…

The niche end of running is having a moment, and the brand work coming out of it is sharp and worth spotlighting. 

 

Tracksmith got there first with its Ivy League track team and New England prep aesthetic. Bandit followed from Brooklyn, with NYC streetwear edge and billboards taunting, "PRs Don't Run Themselves." Then Satisfy arrived from Paris, priced like Acne Studios and styled more like a fashion house than a running brand. None of them is outselling Nike, and yet all of them are selling something Nike can't.

 

We see three brands, from three cities, deploying three sharply different aesthetics. And they're all killing it in the same ways:

 

1. The product works as a distinctive brand asset. Each brand is recognizable from across the street, often without a logo in sight. The kit is the asset: hard-earned, hard to copy.
 

2. Crafting community codes. Wearing the singlet is a shibboleth*. The product doubles as in-group signal, which compounds loyalty in a way mainstream brands struggle to manufacture.
 

3. Strong editorial POV. Tracksmith publishes a magazine, Bandit prints zines, and Satisfy reads like The New Yorker. Each brand has crafted a distinctive voice, and puts out content that more than earns its place in print.
 

For any brand competing inside a category dominated by giants (which is…a lot of them), it's worth keeping these principles in mind.