> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What Adidas and the London Marathon taught me about product marketing - URL: https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/what-adidas-and-the-london-marathon-taught-me-about-product-marketing/ - Published: 2026-04-29T16:13:04.000Z - Updated: 2026-04-29T16:18:32.000Z - Description: Here's what an historic sporting moment taught me about marketing your product to the masses. - Author: Charley Gale - Tags: Product Marketing Strategy On Sunday, something happened at the London Marathon that stopped me in my tracks (pun well intended!). Sabastian Sawe crossed the finish line in 1:59:30, the **first-ever official sub-2-hour marathon**. His teammate Yomif Kejelcha crossed in 1:59:41 — on his *marathon debut*. Tigist Assefa broke the **women-only world record** with 2:15:41\. This is three athletes breaking three world records... and they were all in the **same shoe** made by Adidas. As someone who spends their days thinking about product marketing, I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd just watched. This was an unreal historic sporting moment, but it was also one of the most effective pieces of product marketing I've ever seen. Let's get into why... ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/e8/42/e8425f10-c6bc-4266-b03f-495034377a60/content/images/2026/04/sebastian-sawe.webp) Kenya's Sabastian Sawe celebrates making history \[Matthew Childs/Reuters\] ## The narrative that got stolen For years, Nike has owned the "breaking barriers" story in running. Their campaigns, their athletes, and their cultural footprint were all carefully built around the idea of pushing the absolute limit of human performance. It's brilliant positioning. Or at least, it was. Because on Sunday morning in London, Adidas quietly made that narrative theirs. There was no loud launch campaign, billboard, or carefully timed press release. Just three athletes in their shoes running times the world had never seen before... doing the very thing Nike had spent millions of dollars *talking* about. More than luck, that's what happens when your product **actually delivers on your promise**. ## It was a collaboration Here's what makes this more than a feel-good story for the Adidas marketing team. The Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 — the shoe all three athletes wore — wasn't handed to them at the start line. It was developed *with* them. The apparel too: the Techfit+ Endurance Shorts, the Climacool+ Singlet, the Techfit+ Endurance Suit. Every piece was engineered in close partnership between the athletes and the Adidas innovation team, over years. Patrick Nava, General Manager at Adidas Running, [put it well](https://news.adidas.com/running/two-adidas-athletes-sabastian-sawe-and-yomif-kejelcha-break-the-sub-2-hour-marathon-barrier-in-the-r/s/d4be4eac-a3b8-47d5-835f-9cbd685638ca): the historic result was "a testament to the years of hard work and dedication they have made, alongside our innovation team." And when Sawe crossed the finish line, he said something that every product marketer should screenshot and stick above their desk: > *"It reflects the hard work behind the scenes, the support of my team, and the role of innovation in helping me push beyond limits."* That is your customer, marketing your product to the entire world in real time. ## The lesson we don't always want to hear Here's the part that stings a little, and I say this as someone who loves a good [messaging framework](https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/product-messaging-framework-template/) as much as anyone. > **You can be the best product marketer in the world, and still lose to a better product.** You can nail your [positioning](https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/positioning-statement-template-framework/), craft a beautiful [narrative](https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/the-what-why-and-how-of-storytelling/), build a flawless [launch plan](https://www.productmarketingalliance.com/product-launch-and-land-answering-the-what-why-when-and-how/)... and if your competitor's product genuinely does something yours can't, the market will do their marketing for them. For free. At scale. In ways no budget can buy. Every journalist covering the race led with "Adidas." Every running forum is dissecting the shoe tech. Every amateur runner who watched on Sunday is now Googling the Adizero. In fact, [Adidas shares have soared since it happened](https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/general/athletics/sebastian-sawe-london-marathon-record-adidas-b2965555.html). Adidas didn't earn that coverage purely through its marketing team. Their *product* earned it. ## What this means for PMMs I think the best product marketers understand something easy to lose sight of when you're deep in a launch plan: your job isn't to compensate for a weak product with strong messaging. Your job is to build such a clear, compelling bridge between what a product *actually does* and what a customer *actually needs* that when the defining moment comes, the product can speak for itself. That means being close to the product and the customer, and understanding the real-world problems your product solves well enough to recognize a "London Marathon moment" when it's coming, and being ready to amplify it. To me, the best marketing asset you will ever have isn't a campaign but a customer who genuinely can't stop talking about you. But they'll only do that if you give them something worth talking about. So yes, obsess over your positioning. Craft the narrative. Build the launch plan. And then make sure the shoes can run the race.