The Culture Heist

I didn’t want to wade into that “circle pit’ conversion that the entirety of the running world had been circling around these past few days, but I thought two posts were worth sharing.

Chris Z writes on ‘Das Letter Z‘:

I am writing this because this disturbing brand theatre in the desert moved something personal in me.

Chris doesn’t write his article about the business and marketing angle, or how this stunt affects running culture, he talks about punk and hardcore subculture here, which I ,as an outsider to this, appreciate.

Chris also shares an article I had bookmarked a couple of days ago by Katherine Douglas at ‘Running Wylder‘ who wrote about the feeling the images evoked as well as the overall impact of it all:

The lack of diversity and the blatant toxic bro culture are so exclusive and so specific to a certain type of runner I’m honestly embarrassed to have thigh tattoos.
…
A good collab (and subsequently a good launch event) should get people talking, initiate (+ fuel) the buzz around the upcoming products and raise the mutual brand equity of both parties involved. Sadidas got ppl talking but for the wrong reasons. One could argue the brand equity of both was lowered and instead of reaching new customers, they turned them off.

To me Satisfy feels like a brand that’s run out of ideas.