Bandit Running's Olympic happy ending, locked up packaging, and Whoop's new body composition feature...
Here’s what we got this week in the business world of health, fitness, & wellness:
🗞️ The Story - Bandit Running’s Olympic campaign gets a happy ending.
📈 The Strategy - Packaging that arrives locked up.
🛍️ The Product - Whoop announces new body composition feature.
Bandit Running’s genius Olympic campaign gets a happy ending.
As Trevor Bassitt, one of the athletes in the campaign, qualified for the Paris Olympics:
For context, Bandit Running did a campaign called “The unsponsored Project” for the US Olympic Trials (I wrote about it HERE in last week’s newsletter).
The campaign outfitted 35 unsponsored track & field athletes in unbranded, all black, Bandit Running gear.
Essentially to bring attention to these athlete’s independence and support them for potential future sponsorship from major brands.
They first did this back in 2023 at the US Outdoors, outfitting 9 athletes in the unbranded gear.
And it resulted in 1 of the athletes landing a full time sponsorship with a major brand.
Fast forward to today, and they add another success story to this ongoing campaign.
With Trevor Bassitt qualifying for the Paris Olympics, and a high likelihood of him landing a full time sponsorship soon.
When I wrote about this last week, I mentioned it being a win-win-win for Bandit, the athletes, AND the major brands.
As Bandit gets exposure, the athletes get highlighted to major brands, and the major brands know who to scout for sponsorship.
Marketing is all about storytelling and evoking emotion. Create a hero. Create an enemy. Tell us a story. Give us a reason to care.
Few brands are doing it this way, but they should be taking notes from this campaign.
So congrats to Trevor and well done Bandit.
So usually when you order something online, it arrives in a cardboard box you can open immediately right?
Well not this PR package done by Runway Financial:
Scan the QR code on the lock tag, and you’re brought to a countdown timer that signifies the launch date of the product.
So when the product “launches” you’ll be able to unlock the package.
Brilliant.
And I know Runway is a fintech company, they have nothing to do with fitness.
But I want to use this example to throw it back to a strategy I talked about with those red Lululemon reusable shopping bags.
And that strategy is how you can create a marketing flywheel from traditionally boring or “throwaway” pieces of your product.
By putting a unique twist on those things to give it viral potential.
Something that makes the consumer want to post about it and share.
Turn your store bags into reusable purses like Lululemon.
Send your PR launch products with a time lock like Runway.
Make your runway show invites a box of real bread & butter they can eat like Jacquemus.
Turn the tab on your drink can into a cool reusable golf ball marker (no example, just an idea I have).
There are SO MANY ways you can get creative throughout the entire user experience of your product. Don’t just do something because that’s just “how is it”. Rethink convention and have fun with it.
Whoop announced a new body composition feature in partnership with WITHINGS.
It will allow users to measure and manage advanced body composition and weight metrics.
Giving you comprehensive insights and a better understanding of your holistic health.
It basically pairs with your WITHINGS weight scale and gives you those insights in the Whoop app - which combines with all of the other advanced data your Whoop gives you.
My quick take:
I’ve always loved knowing my body composition and advanced weight metrics - beyond just the single number on the scale.
I like knowing my body fat %, muscle mass, body water %, metabolic age, etc…
Initially that started by using those InBody scans (if I could find them) at the gym or a supplement store. Then I bought a smart scale to measure it at home.
And I’ve also gone through phases of using a Whoop.
But there was always a gap that I noticed in my fitness tracking.
I was measuring a lot of stuff, but it didn’t talk to each other.
One of my favorite phrases is, “if you don't track it you can't measure it“.
And tracking is great, but what good is it if you can’t compare and analyze the data to the metrics that actually cause it.
Is my body fat % from the scale going up when my recovery metrics on my Whoop are bad?
Those are the types of things I want to know because they are actionable insights.
And with this new feature and partnership from Whoop and WITHINGS, it appears these data relationships are now possible.
I love it.
Products are slimming down in appearance and bulking up on features. It’s an exciting time for wearables and it’s gonna be cool to see what comes in the next 3-5 years.
