CLIF Bar: race day and the months before it

The brief

CLIF Bar is an icon of American endurance culture but far less known in Europe. It needed a social presence that would introduce the brand to European runners and make its marathon partnerships in London and Berlin count beyond the people at the stand.

The insight

Marathon sponsorship celebrates the fastest runners. Yet most of the field finishes hours behind them, and for that majority a good time is about getting there, enjoying it and the people around them, not the number on the clock. That slower, more determined majority is exactly who CLIF Bar is for.

The idea

One position, carried across two races: CLIF stands with the slow majority. Each activation on the ground became the high point of a story told online.

In London, Final Finishers celebrated the last runners across the line, not the first, with editorial portraits of runners who had been out for eight hours or more and a cheer zone at the secondary finish line. “First place took 1:59. Last place took everything.”

In Berlin, the idea became “Here for the good times”. For the first time in the race’s history, pacers were added for 5:00, 5:30 and 6:00 finishes. Messages runners wrote to their future selves at the Expo reappeared at kilometre 38, and finishers got their own “shoe shot”, the winners’ photo ritual, shown on social media and across the city.

The role

Wrote the European social launch strategy, planned how the brand’s activations at the London and Berlin Marathons would be amplified on social, and integrated creator content into the plan. Follow the work on @clifeurope.

In the press

Final Finishers was covered by Ads With Benefits, and the Berlin campaign by Creative Salon, with Ogilvy UK and Ogilvy Social.Lab credited for the work.

Photography: Flynn Duggan (London), Stefan Mayer (Berlin), for CLIF.