At the finish line: London Marathon’s best brand plays

Nothing quite beats the festival-like excitement of London Marathon day. It’s the event that truly has something for everyone: the contemplative solitude of south-east London; the heady hysterics of Tower Bridge, and the blurry delirium of the long Embankment. And that’s just for the onlookers.

With an estimated 800,000 road-side spectators, the event is a marketer’s dream. And on the day that got the world excited for its record-breaking outcome, the Boldspace team were excited for a different reason: brand activations.

Here’s our breakdown of this year’s standout marathon campaigns.

Sult – Harriet Alway, Account Director

It might be cliché that we love an underdog. But this year was no exception, and Sult played it well.

A challenger electrolyte brand taking a swing at Liquid I.V. – the category heavyweight, backed by Unilever and front-and-centre at the London Marathon.

Their provocation was simple: why should a huge American brand own one of Britain’s most iconic races?

Sult gate-crashed the Liquid I.V. pop-up, posing undercover and capturing their adventure organically. No big-budget build, no official partnership. Just an offbeat, mischievous idea, executed quickly.

Scrappy. Immediate. Slightly unhinged in the best way. All the things that make a good (and lovable) story. When you can’t play at scale, the win is in finding an edge.

Burger King – Neil Richardson, Creative Director

Having run the marathon this year, I can say with some authority: the craving is real.

There’s always a slightly uneasy tension when fast food turns up at sporting events, but Burger King leaned into it rather than away from it.

Instead of trying to be part of the performance, they positioned themselves as the payoff, the thing you’ve been denying yourself for 26.2 miles.

It’s a simple reframing, but an effective one, and it’s grounded in real runner behaviour, not brand wishful thinking.

What really elevates it is the execution. The photography feels visceral, almost primal. Less polished campaign, more raw craving. Excellent work.

Vaseline – Chloe Beckett, Senior Director

The marathon has been crying out for more space to be owned by the ‘less sexy’ brands, and this year Vaseline delivered. Pitching itself as the marathon’s official ‘nipple sponsor,’ the brand showed up with humour, truth, and relevance. After all, it’s true that a large percentage of runners on the start line would have greased up with Vaseline in their final prep – it’s just that no one talks about it.

While the brand certainly shone a light on its critical race day role, could it have gone further? Art directionally, Vaseline ads leant into the familiar marathon playbook: fit, slim athletes adorned with ticks slightly suggestive of another well-known tick-based brand. Perhaps there was space for more self-deprecation, or humorous honesty, in the execution. But 10/10 for showing up in this context at all.

Nike – Jake Shepherd-Smith, Senior Account Executive

Whatever your thoughts are on the somewhat polarising Nike OOH campaign, it’s hard to argue with their activation for the marathon day itself. Providing excited race viewers with their own free branded signs proved phenomenal for brand exposure, to the extent that I don’t think there was a stretch of the race where I couldn’t see one. Nike owned the experience, inviting the public to be a part of the story, and seamlessly integrated the brand into the race. 

The ‘moment’ however, when world record breaker Sabastian Sawe triumphantly held up the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3, was dominated by Adidas. After all of Nike’s work to ‘own’ the sub-2 conversation, it must be gruelling for another brand to take it at the tape.

But is it better to own the moment or the experience at an event like the marathon? It’s always hard to tell, but without doing one or the other, you’re not in the conversation at all.