Gatecrasher
What Nike’s stunt can teach us about taking the side door
Imagine you’re the marketing executive at New Balance. You’ve just landed the sponsorship deal of a lifetime - the official shoe sponsor of the 2025 New York City Marathon.
Your logo is on the bibs, on the banners, on the merch. Tens of thousands of runners with disposable income, all seeing your brand at one of the most iconic races in the world.
What a coup!
Then, while your colleague is on the ferry heading to the start line, they send you this video (see below).
If you can’t see the video, here’s what’s happening - runners are crammed onto the ferry, all looking towards the Statue of Liberty, while across the harbour a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry, wrapped in bright red, cuts into the scene with a giant Nike message: “NYC won’t carry you. It pushes you.”
Before the marathon had even begun, Nike was part of the experience, and the scene was all over the socials. Honestly, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when that stunt got pitched.
Btw, it wasn’t just the ferry - Nike ads were perfectly placed all along the marathon route and across New York City, plus they wrote a 6-page love letter to runners in the New York Times the following day.
They weren’t the official sponsor, but that didn’t stop them from making a HUGE impact. I think people loved them even more because it was so brazen.
If you were New Balance, you’d feel a little heartbroken.
Of course, Nike has a budget most of us can only dream of. But the main idea here is something everyone can use - you don’t need an official title to make an impact.
Nike could have just accepted that New Balance got the sponsorship and thought there was nothing they could do. Instead, they found another way in and took it.
I once worked for a company that did things the same way.
Wicked Campers. I get it - people often groan when they hear the name. But hear me out, because back then, they were truly great at this.
Think about what you expect from a campervan rental. You return the van with a full tank and worry about every scratch or dent because of the deposit. It’s all very strict, like Britz or Maui.
Wicked Campers couldn’t compete in that way because their vans were older and rougher.
So they decided to stop competing on those features and benefits, and made them an advantage.
Return the van without fuel? No problem. Scratches and dents? They just painted over them, often with the next wild design. They turned every weakness into part of the experience. What should have been drawbacks became the reasons people picked them.
What joins these two examples together?
Both Nike and Wicked Campers refused to let the absence of something stop them. Nike didn’t have the sponsorship; Wicked Campers didn’t have the fleet.
In both cases, they looked at what they were missing and asked a better question: “What can we do instead?”
We can all ask ourselves that question.
Maybe the thing you think is holding you back is actually the thing you can use to stand out.
For example, I’m a solopreneur. Some people hear that and think smaller. But the advantage is that clients deal directly with me, not a chain of intermediaries. There’s no handover to graduates, no passing the work down the line, and no inflated overheads built into the price. I’m also faster and more responsive.
Reflect: If you had to turn one limitation into a talking point, what would you choose and how would you frame it?
Here’s some helpful resources to encourage you to think along these lines:
Just Enough Evil by Alistair Croll and Emily Ross (book).
The Nike story on Acquired (a brilliant, brilliant listen).
ASAP needs a rebrand
Here’s a poll I asked on LinkedIn, and there seems to be mixed messages on what ASAP actually means.
There’s no correct answer, it’s all subjective, and that’s why I think the lesson here is - remove ASAP from your vocab, and just give people a precise date and time.
One interesting point from the comments was that ASAP lands differently depending on the channel. A phone call feels more “urgent” while an email can feel passive, abrupt, or easy to ignore. It just reminds me of that quote, ‘the medium is the message’.
Interview of the week
Thanks to Joeri from The Solo Sauce Podcast for this interview. We recorded it a few days before I flew to Nepal last year, and I remember being extremely busy/flat out from trying to cram too much in my week, so he got a nice unfiltered version in this interview(!). It's a brilliant chat around my podcast journey, building a community, writing my book, the illusion of 'busy' and so much more!
Also, welcome new readers!
Finally, great to have a bunch of new readers, thanks for joining us. Here’s some links to some of the most reader-loved articles:
As always, click the Heart 💙 if anything in this article resonated and I’ll check in with you next week.
🌴 Leanne “ASAP(ish)” Hughes
p.s. Are we connected on LinkedIn? If not, change that by sending me a connection request. Or, follow more off-the-cuff stuff over on Instagram.
Such a great reflection and guerilla campaign! If I were New Balance I would be asking my sponsorship manager why they didn't buy up all the ad real estate around the event to prevent this happening. But also if I was the New Balance sponsorship manager, I would buy what real estate was left and run a campaign that said something like "we know nike wants to run beside you, but only new balance comes in first and propels you across the finish line". It would be catchier and funnier of course (I'm no ad copy writer), but a swift move could have brought New Balance out as the clear winner.