Under Armour Rule Yourself Campaign Review

Between 2015 and 2016, Under Armour (UA) unveiled its signature marketing campaign, “Rule Yourself”, which featured its signature athletes Stephen Curry (basketball), Misty Copeland (ballerina), Michael Phelps (swimming), Jordan Spieth (golf), and Tom Brady (football) in a series of videos and infographics that attempt to capture the hard work, dedication, and perseverance needed to succeed.

Product Description

UA’s mission statement aspires to make all athletes better through passion, design, and the relentless pursuit of innovation. The Baltimore-based company makes high-performance apparel, footwear, and equipment intended to enhance athletic capabilities. These products cover a wide range of sports, including running, basketball, football, baseball, and swimming.

The predominant focus of the company relates to improving performance, so the company sponsors many of the country’s most proficient athletes who have sustained excellence. UA wants its athletes to symbolize an unwavering commitment to their craft and a relentless motivation to succeed regardless of the talent level. Through the company’s messaging over the past decade, UA emphasizes that hard work can propel even the lesser talented athletes to the pinnacle of their respective professions. Thus, UA offers the tools (sporting goods products) that provide an opportunity for any athlete to succeed.

Campaign Goals

For the “Rule Yourself” campaign in 2015 and 2016, UA attempted to solidify itself as a diligent, performance-enhancing brand. The primary concept, “you are the sum of all of your training”, paints all of the brand’s highest profile athletes as the combination of their entire training regimen.

UA kicked off the campaign in 2015 with the debut of a 60-second video titled “Anthem”, which portrays Copeland, Curry, and Spieth’s paths to success from their rigorous training routines. The sporting goods company depicts each athlete as an army of synchronized performers who relentlessly practice their skills to get better. Each of the subsequent visuals in the “Rule Yourself” campaign continues to capture the dedication of the UA athletes and the devotion to their crafts when “nobody is watching”.

The duplicate visuals of the athletes’ practicing their crafts showcase the repetition and practice required to achieve sustained excellence in competition. These have earned universal respect by overcoming enormous hurdles to flourish. Thus, through highlighting underdogs in the “Rule Yourself” campaign, UA desires to inspire everyday people to stay humble and hungry for success by providing the necessary tools — apparel, footwear, and equipment — required to persevere and push through a difficult workout.

Target Audience

Sporting goods has become an incredibly competitive and niche market, in which several emerging companies have recently developed to target specific groups of customers. For instance, brands like Lululemon, Bois Blanc Sports, and Tower Paddle Boards have reached clearly defined audiences that have helped them develop credible brands over the last few years.

Under Armour has chosen to compete with powerhouse brands Nike and Adidas in offering a combination of apparel, footwear, and equipment across several different sporting categories. In addition to Nike and Adidas, UA must also contend with the smaller and more niche companies that offer products pertaining to a specific sport and category.

To differentiate itself from these competitors, UA has exclusively focused on offering performance-enhancing benefits and has specifically targeted aspiring athletes from a wide range of categories by sponsoring those who have overcome obstacles to sustain success. For instance, the New England Patriots only selected Brady with the 199th overall pick in the 2000 NFL Draft while every power basketball university passed on Curry after high school. Yet, both men have achieved unprecedented excellence and have developed into global superstars; Brady has gone on to win five Super Bowls while Curry has won the NBA MVP twice while setting numerous shooting records.

The consumer profiles of UA’s demographic largely involve serious-minded athletes who may not possess the raw talent to naturally succeed. To emotionally connect with its customers, UA’s value proposition uses terms like “effort” and “outnumber your odds” to explain that anyone can succeed through persistence and dedication.

UA’s self-proclaimed “underdog strategy” offers a distinction from Nike’s polarizing figures and Adidas’ unique athletes. Certainly, all three of these companies have identical products and use motivational messages to connect with their respective audiences. However, UA’s message specifically focuses on humility and relentless dedication in order to achieve maximum performance benefits. Nike and Adidas, along with other sporting goods companies, have increasingly prided themselves on identifying as lifestyle brands along with functionality, while UA has purposefully chosen to strictly remain as a performance-driven brand with this campaign.

Means Used to Reach Audience

To reach its core audience, UA aired many different versions of these video commercials in the middle of major sporting events, depending on the sport. For instance, the Tom Brady version of the advertisement played during football games, when most people watching the game would likely associate with him. The same principle held true for other sporting events, such as Steph Curry and basketball games and Jordan Spieth and golf events.

Additionally, UA heavily used social media and the hashtags #IWill and #RuleYourself on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to help spread the theme of training as the focal point of the athlete. Most of these athletes who took part in this campaign have monstrous social followings that have continued to grow (ex: Steph Curry ~20 million Instagram followers, Tom Brady ~ 4.4 Facebook likes, Michael Phelps ~8.7 Facebook likes, Misty Copeland ~1.5 Instagram followers). Combining the strong social capital of these athletes with UA’s 16 million followers across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram provided UA with the means to effectively spread its campaign message.

Furthermore, UA placed billboards and posters at various sporting goods stores across the country, inside public gyms, sports clubs, and at public sporting events to further connect with the consumers. Since the company directly targeted athletes interested in improving performance, UA tried to directly communicate its message in as many athletic settings as possible by using the endorsers as physical symbols and through a simple yet powerful written message that conveyed the company’s mission to the public.

UA’s combined marketing budget in 2015 and 2016 equaled almost $900 million, and the company used the mixture of social media, television commercials, and non-digital posters to spread the message to its targeted audience.

Campaign Positives

Overall, UA’s brand demonstrably grew from 2015 until the end of 2016, when the campaign fully concluded. UA posted record revenues and earnings in 2016, as total revenues rose 22% from 2015 to 2016 (increased to $4.8 billion). The company had tremendous gross margin in both 2015 (48.1%) and 2016 (46.5%), while operating income increased 6% to $420 million in 2016 and net income grew 11% to $259 million.

UA benefitted from fortuitous timing with publicity, as Stephen Curry won the NBA MVP in both 2015–2016, Michael Phelps won five gold medals at the Rio Olympics, Tom Brady won a Super Bowl, and Jordan Spieth rapidly rose to the pinnacle of golf all during the same time period. Because of their presence in many marquee events — such as the Olympics, NBA Finals, The Masters, and the Super Bowl — UA received enormous exposure from these athletes’ on-field success.

In fact, Michael Phelps’ “Rule Yourself” ad became one of the MOST shared Olympic spots ever on social media (56% from Facebook, 28% from Twitter), with 47% of these people claimed to share the video through inspiration. In addition, this Phelps commercial won a top prize at the 2016 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, which helped UA achieve its highest band value at $5.5 billion by the end of 2016.

Unlike some of the competitors’ campaigns, like Nike’s “Just Do It”, UA did a masterful job with “Rule Yourself” on exclusively focusing on the individual athletes themselves. It tells a deep story from the athlete’s perspective on the genuine hard work and persistence required to succeed. As the UA athletes excelled in their crafts during this campaign, overall sales for UA’s products reached record levels, which contributed to the company’s highest brand valuation and total revenues by the end of 2016.

Campaign Negatives

As well as UA did with the signature male athletes that boosted its brand, it failed to successively attract many females despite some major opportunities. Since it sells both male and female products, UA should have capitalized on its strong brand awareness by spreading the message towards females.

For the 2016 fiscal year, women’s products only accounted for $1 billion out of the $4.8 billion in revenues. Most of the campaign predominantly starred male athletes and for a company targeting aspiring athletes looking to improve performance, it should have expanded the pie and sent stronger messages towards females, which likely would have further improved UA’s performance in the campaign.

Instead, UA’s message did not resonate that deeply with many females, and the lack of gender diversity contributed to a drop-off performance in 2017, a year in which UA’s brand valuation reduced by over $1 billion and the company had a total net loss of $48 million. If UA invests significant resources into developing female products, the company must make a concerted effort into connecting with the female demographic. Otherwise, it will lag behind both Nike and Adidas, both of which have strong global sales with female consumers.

Conclusion

Overall, Under Armour did a valiant job of conveying a simple yet powerful message to its target audience throughout its “Rule Yourself” Campaign between 2015 and 2016. Income, brand value, and brand exposure all significantly improved from the beginning of the campaign until the end. The company positioned itself as a distinct, performance-enhancing sporting goods company that specifically targeted aspiring athletes looking to achieve sustained success.

UA used highly successful athletes who have prospered in their crafts to send a personalized message that deeply connected with the target audience. However, one deep area that the company failed to capitalize on involved the female demographic, which significantly hurt the brand in the subsequent months following the campaign. In the future, if UA wants to define itself as a diverse, gender-neutral company, it must appropriately invest in marketing the brand that will deeply resonate better with females. Otherwise, UA will likely continue to slip in the future.