"Respect the Marathon, run like an animal"

One of my all time entertaining and powerful advertising campaigns is “Run like an animal” by Pearl Izumi from about 8 years ago and at the time I wrote a few pieces on it.

This type of campaign is designed to make a brand stand out and to get people talking and debating for a long time. The angle that was taken was that of adopting a just cause to reverse a decline that nobody has had the courage to tackle.
Through this campaign, marathon elitists suddenly found their voices. As far as the elitists are concerned, runners said to be taking lunch breaks and running every second kilometre all the way to finish are not worthy of the medal. Let alone celebrities and well-known individuals - they believe the shift of focus from the top finishers to the celebrity finishers “dumbs” down the sport. But we know people have taken up the marathon challenge, thanks to these celebrity “endorsements”. They also cite the statistics from Running USA that the median marathon finish time dropped from 3:37 in 1980 to 4:43 in 2008 but they forget to quote the growth in the sport over the time.

I personally respect the marathon, it is long and hard. But I think “running it like an animal” is purely relative - and does make an interesting slogan and an effective advertising campaign.