Taking Advantage of What UTMB Has Created

Outside the actual races this felt like a fairly quiet UTMB week for the UTMB organization. There weren’t any massive announcements¹, either by UTMB, by any of the brands associated with them or by brands just being in town.

There were group runs, elite meet-ups, and other gatherings, but no major product releases or other marketing stunts.

There really was only one new addition that many in the media hung their hat on and wrote lengthy Substack newsletters or LinkedIn think pieces:

The announcement by UTMB to crack down on “Ambush Marketing”.

Here’s the definition of what it means:

Ambush marketing or ambush advertising is a marketing strategy in which an advertiser “ambushes” an event to compete for exposure against other advertisers.

Here’s how UTMB talked about in their guide to the press:

The development of the HOKA UTMB® Mont-Blanc, particularly in Chamonix, and the influx of spectators have created numerous opportunities for brands seeking to reach trail enthusiasts. This has sometimes led to excesses, such as unauthorized advertising and distribution of products, that impact the local community. To deal with these ambush marketing practices and protect the integrity of the event, UTMB Group has put in place several strict measures…

Matt Trappe picks this up in his Substack, calling it misplaced:

What an unproductive way for the race org to continue their bad guy reputation.

What’s funny in Matt’s takedown is the complete omission of the notion that this marketing crackdown might’ve been a requirement from their title sponsor Hoka, or another brand on their roster. But let’s face it, it was Hoka, right?

Every event organization is seeking sponsors to help offset their enormous expenses. In fact, every participant wants these sponsors, consciously or subconsciously – no one wants to pay for the entire cost of putting on an event like this through JUST the entry fees. So there are negotiations and contracts and dollars exchanged, and of course these unofficial brand activation were being discussed. Chamonix and the larger Mont-Blanc region becomes a giant stadium during that UTMB week. And brands not wanting to fork over the sponsorship dollars have figured this out and are taking advantage of this by creating their own activation program on top of the official event. Inherently there’s nothing wrong with that, and since Chamonix is a city and not an actual stadium there’s only so much UMTB can do about it.

For example Brooks had ads at the Geneva airport (the closest major airport to Chamonix), on the back of shuttle and public buses and they flew a paraglider almost the entire week over the town. But Brooks also strategically had their team chalets right next to the OCC course and had big banners hung from the balconies. I heard that last year they created an unofficial cheering and almost aid station along the route. Does this cross the line? UTMB, or more likely HOKA thought so and this year the banners were down during the race (at least when I ran by).

The media can’t have it both ways, constantly asking for more professionalization in the sport and wanting prize money for winners and then whine when the events get more professional. HOKA put up the price money, HOKA asked UTMB to crack down on the ambush marketing. (I admit this is conjecture, I don’t know if HOKA demanded this, but my spidey-senses tell me this is not something that UTMB came up with by itself.) Of course you can be on the side that UTMB should just allow every brand to do everything, but then they won’t have a title sponsor.

What we need is a professionalization in our media reporting and not just reactionary think pieces by folks looking for “fun things” that could come out of creative marketing “flash mobs” by, let’s face it, HUGE brands who themselves could afford to actually put up sponsorship dollars, but choose to get eyeballs on the cheap.

Or are we seriously okay with NIKE, a multi-billion dollar global corporation taking advantage of a nonprofit by ambushing Western States and giving away free shoes through a pop up shop along the route and bypassing giving anything to Western States in return to that marketing exposure²?

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¹ Friend Aaron Shimmons pointed out to me that Norda released their 005 shoe during UTMB week – I apologize for the omission.

² Why did no one report on this when this went down earlier this year?