Small Player, Big Game: How Underdogs Can Dominate Brand Battles

Advertising plasters the Olympics.

Within the Parade of Athletes, at each occasion venue, and through each media alternative, the opponents typically put on the branded attire of their nation’s sponsor. Except, after all, the athlete is a star who has a unique model deal.

For instance, Nike is the attire model sponsor for the U.S. delegation, however males’s basketball star Steph Curry has a cope with Beneath Armour. So, Steph doesn’t put on a Nike-branded uniform on the courtroom.

Olympic athlete sponsorship is a aggressive sport unto itself, and it includes large, large cash.

However what about all of the unsponsored athletes who earned a spot and will turn out to be the following Simone Biles, Trinity Rodman, or Katie Ledecky?

One small sports activities attire model got here up with an excellent answer that additionally introduced it worldwide consciousness.

Learn on or watch this video:

Bandit makes Unsponsored play

Complete numbers are laborious to search out for Olympic sponsorships. Sportico reports that Group USA alone has a $2.5 billion company sponsorship aim for the 2028 Summer season Video games in Los Angeles. It’s a posh funding technique for manufacturers to determine which groups, people, and sports activities to sponsor that can get probably the most bang for his or her large, large bucks.

However one tiny model devised a singular transfer within the face of this high-dollar competitors.

Bandit, a small operating attire model, performed the Unsponsored Project. It’s an important instance of how advertising can resolve an precise downside and supply super worth for everyone concerned.

Right here’s the issue that Bandit solved. Many sports activities host qualifying occasions to see who will earn a spot on the Olympic workforce. For instance, USA Observe & Area hosts the USA Observe & Area Outside Championships.

On the trials, the celebs and former Olympic athletes put on the gear of their big-name model sponsors. However the unsponsored opponents have a troublesome alternative. They may give the massive model free promoting by sporting its clothes and probably lessening their energy in negotiating a model deal in the event that they make the workforce. Or they will put on clothes with out logos and maybe go unnoticed.

Bandit, which is approach too small to sponsor well-known stars or guess on anyone athlete, noticed a chance. It supported 35 unsponsored athletes within the monitor and discipline trials, offering an athlete-only line of the identical black, logo-less attire. It additionally gave the athletes cash for flights, resorts, and meals for the trials. 

And right here’s the kicker. The Bandit sponsorship settlement included an opt-out clause that permit the athletes depart the deal every time they wished. So, in the event that they made the workforce, they might negotiate model offers with whomever they need.

Why would Bandit do that? To get what we’re doing now — speak in regards to the operating attire model.

The marketing campaign has been an enormous success. Bandit measured press protection, model consciousness, impressions throughout every kind of media. The CEO says they’re positive they’ll see income advantages, however the degree of consciousness created by the corporate is genius.

And splendidly, the model has a presence in Paris. It was contacted after the sponsor for the nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines backed out. Now, Bandit is on the bottom on the Olympics.

Play a brand new recreation to win in opposition to competing manufacturers

So, what’s the takeaway for you?

For those who’re a smaller or challenger model, you in all probability can’t outspend or outrank your competitors. Getting model recognition is difficult. 

However you could be deeper, extra reliable, extra useful, extra revolutionary, and simply higher than your competitors. You may play a unique recreation.

Bandit found a approach into the massive leagues — spreading a advertising funding throughout a wide selection of the small leagues. These Bandit-sponsored athletes will all the time bear in mind how the corporate solved an issue for them.

Extra importantly, everyone who desires to know who did that — who solved THAT downside — will uncover the model. Bandit solved a much bigger — or totally different — downside than you’d usually affiliate with a model like yours.

Within the early 2000s, I used to be the CMO of a small software program firm. Nobody knew what software program as a service or cloud computing even meant, and our product was all about internet content material administration.

We competed in opposition to firms a thousand occasions our dimension, like Microsoft, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, and Adobe. We didn’t attempt to go face to face, promoting our internet content material administration product as higher than the giants’ merchandise.

We bought a greater concept for software program as a service. We informed the story of cloud computing. That was our differentiator. If we may promote folks on that, then we’d have satisfied them we may deal with a small a part of their cloud computing. We didn’t play the product vs. product recreation. We performed the new-idea recreation and constructed belief on that basis.

So, the lesson you’ll be able to be taught from that and the way Bandit stole consideration from the largest opponents on the Olympics? Don’t be higher on the current recreation, invent a brand new one.