Under Armour: I Will What I Want
Under Armour sought to transform its uber masculine brand image and significantly grow its women's market share. The client needed a campaign that resonated with women defying expectations, aiming to establish Under Armour as a symbol of female athletic aspiration and drive substantial increases in traffic and sales.
Creative Idea
Under Armour used real-time public judgment against Gisele Bündchen to prove that will beats noise.
Under Armour challenged its masculine image by signing supermodel Gisele Bündchen, leveraging anticipated public judgment. They used real-time social commentary in ads and a live web experience to show Gisele defying "noise," powerfully proving that "will beats noise" and making the brand a symbol of female athletic aspiration.
Turning Real Time Haters Into Real Time Content
The Will Beats Noise Experiment
To capture the raw intensity of the Gisele Bündchen spot, Droga5 and director Jaron Albertin utilized a custom WebGL engine to scrape social media in real-time. As Gisele filmed a single-shot take hitting a heavy bag, actual comments from the internet - both supportive and vitriolic - were projected onto the gym walls. The agency intentionally announced her signing days prior to trigger a "noise" peak, allowing them to film her reacting to the live backlash of being called a "non-athlete."
Defying the Wrong Body
The Misty Copeland film, directed by Johnny Green, centered on a real rejection letter Copeland received at age 13. The voiceover, read by a young girl, listed her "lack of right feet" and "wrong body for ballet," creating a stark contrast with her powerful, muscular performance. This authentic storytelling helped kill the "pink it and shrink it" industry trend, proving women demanded high-performance gear rather than smaller, colored-down versions of men’s apparel.
A Massive Commercial Pivot
The $15 million investment - the brand's largest for women at the time - yielded a 28% increase in women’s sales and a 42% jump in web traffic. Beyond the 5 billion media impressions, the campaign’s "style quotient" helped Under Armour overtake Adidas to become the No. 2 sports brand in the U.S. market. Leanne Fremar, UA’s then-SVP, noted that the modern female athlete expects the same level of authenticity as a world-class professional, a strategy that eventually helped propel Copeland to become the first African American principal dancer in ABT history.
Creative Strategy Deconstructed
Company
Under Armour possessed high-performance athletic apparel, but its brand image was predominantly masculine, limiting its appeal to female athletes.
Category
Athletic apparel advertising typically highlighted elite performance and physical strength, often reinforcing a traditionally masculine brand image.
Customer
Women athletes desired to defy external judgments and expectations, seeking a brand that celebrated their inner "will" over societal "noise."
Culture
A cultural shift towards female empowerment and defying societal expectations created fertile ground for a message celebrating individual will over external judgment.
Company
Under Armour possessed high-performance athletic apparel, but its brand image was predominantly masculine, limiting its appeal to female athletes.
Category
Athletic apparel advertising typically highlighted elite performance and physical strength, often reinforcing a traditionally masculine brand image.
Strategy:
Empower women to defy external judgment by embodying unwavering personal will.
Customer
Women athletes desired to defy external judgments and expectations, seeking a brand that celebrated their inner "will" over societal "noise."
Culture
A cultural shift towards female empowerment and defying societal expectations created fertile ground for a message celebrating individual will over external judgment.
Strategy:
Empower women to defy external judgment by embodying unwavering personal will.
Results
The campaign generated 1.5 billion media impressions and over $15 million in earned media. Users spent an average of 4 minutes on the campaign site at its peak. Traffic to UA.com increased by 42%. Sales saw a 28% increase. As a result, Under Armour became the second-largest sportswear brand in the US and was named Ad Age's 2014 Marketer of the Year.
1.5 Billion
media impressions
$15 MM
earned media
28%
sales increase
Strategy Technique
Fight stereotypes
The campaign directly challenged Under Armour's "uber masculine image" by celebrating women who defy expectations. It used Gisele Bündchen to embody this fight against judgment, transforming the brand into a symbol of female athletic aspiration.
Creative Technique
Conduct an Experiment
The campaign created a "live social experiment" where real-time public comments about Gisele Bündchen were scraped and projected. This allowed the brand to visually demonstrate its core message - "will beats noise" - by showing Gisele defying judgment live.
Explore Technique
Craft Breakdown
This campaign's craft is exceptional for its innovative use of digital technology to create a live, interactive social experiment, seamlessly integrating real-time online sentiment with physical performance. The strength lies in how it transforms online 'noise' into a tangible element for an athlete to overcome.
The interactive website 'willbeatsnoise.com' that scraped real-time social media comments and projected them onto Gisele's training environment was a groundbreaking and highly engaging digital experience.
The core idea of turning public criticism into a motivational force, literally projecting 'noise' for Gisele to fight against, was an incredibly insightful and powerful concept that resonated deeply.
The visual integration of digital comments with the physical space of Gisele's training, creating a stark yet compelling aesthetic, was very well executed, enhancing the narrative of overcoming judgment.
The minimalist, industrial gym setting served as a perfect canvas for the projected social commentary, creating an authentic and impactful backdrop for Gisele's performance.
The campaign's magic truly comes from the seamless synergy between the insightful idea of literally fighting noise and the innovative digital craft that brought that idea to life through real-time projections and a dynamic web experience.
