Run. Create Content. Post. Repeat.

Our thoughts on the amount of content about running and its added value. What is valuable for fans and readers?

Running here. Running there. Whether you are a runner or not, in the past 12 months you have been exposed to running-related content. Run clubs are the new preferred marketing stunt from brands. Everyone is selling his training plan to run your first marathon. Every influencer discovered their inner passion for running. One of your friends added its PBs in their bio. Every runner is documenting their journey. Every creator embarked in an absurd challenge.

Running is everywhere. It went from being something most people hated during school to the hottest sport. Traditional and social media are loaded with headlines about running.

Run clubs are the new dating apps. Marathon weekends are the new fashion weeks. And so on. In the past months, we experienced a content overload that left us sick like after a Xmas lunch. We don’t consider ourselves experts of this market at all, but we tried to organize our thoughts about it.

To understand the exponential rise of running we should consider it in economic terms. Running was a fairly under exploited market till few years ago when both millennials and the buzzword Gen Z found their love for fitness, being outdoors and a healthy lifestyle. From an economic perspective, the equation is simple. The number of runners grew - read as higher demand - attracting economic players pursuing profits - read as higher offer.

This economic dynamic manifests itself on the internet, where most of us spend their spare time, shop and connect with each other. Brands, media and influencers represent the offer. Us - amateur runners and final consumers - are the demand. As soon as the demand side shows some interest, the offer creates content to sell products, supporting it with storytelling - marketing 101. Running serves as the perfect storytelling to promote clothes, shoes, supplements, training plans, and events. What is being promoted is not necessarily related to the sport - what has Dacia to do with trail running? Running is what stitches everything together. Running is the sauce now.

On the offer side, the amount of running brands and influencers that emerged in the past 2 years is absurd. Training and running clubs proliferated in each major city. Independent running brands were born on the track with clean graphic t-shirts. The streets are packed with influencers documenting their 5k runs or reviewing any piece of gear you can think of. For as much as everyone describes themselves as unique, all these ventures follow pre-set unconscious templates.

• Brand/Run Club: blurred images, attractive models running on the track possibly shirtless, participating in big running events as a team, teasing endless samples rounds, clean aesthetic and neutral colors.

• Influencer: document your journey as a running newbie or someone trying to get faster, choose your theme and stick to it - daily streak, weird clothing, the underdog, knowledgeable - and create your own challenges to overcome - run every day, run from A to B

On the other hand, existing players saw their revenue growth and decided to go all in. More products flooded the market, despite the relatively lack of innovation. When holes in a t-shirt became a relevant design innovation to scream about? Most products satisfy consumers’ needs created by the brands themselves - do we need gravel shoes? Marketing budgets are fat if your conversion rate is high enough. Everyone can have free products as long as they review them and add an affiliate link.

Brands that had nothing to do with running till yesterday made no exception. The world of fashion took its share of the pie in the desperate need of remaining relevant in the eyes of consumers who are losing their interests in luxury. Fashion weeks are packed with social runs. Social runs are fashion shows. When did running in a $150 t-shirt become a status symbol?

In this universe of running content it gets incredibly hard to carve your bubble due to the huge amount that gets produced every day. Every single actor in the market creates content daily. Inevitably, Most of it is standardized and feels like a copy and paste. Both influencers and media gravitate around the same topics and story lines. Product reviews, interviews with the same over-exposed people and defeating your inner demons in yet another endurance challenge are some of them. If you are able to zoom out from the algorithm, these themes become evident resulting in many empty shells made of graphically captivating content with no unique substance.

Analyzing the state of the running content in these terms made us ask ourselves if we are still talking about running at all. How do we keep adding value to the sport by creating meaningful content that stands out and it is not merely driven by economic purposes? Answering this question gets harder and harder. Every content piece added to the pile has less relevance. Every new video of your run has less relevance than the one you published yesterday. Every branded Youtube production has a lower attention span. Can you name a piece of content that excited the whole running community last year? Something like Unbreakable in 2025 would simply be another race video. One of the many. Just another one on the pile. How do we emerge from the pile and move the sport forward?