March saw Decathlon – with brand consultancy Wolff Olins and creative agency AMV BBDO – relaunch its entire global brand to reflect its evolution from a French retailer to a global sports brand through a multi-channel, multi-market ‘Ready To Play’ campaign that invites everyone, everywhere, to rediscover the joy of play.
At the heart of the new brand and the creative sits the human insight that regardless of age, skill level or sporting passion, the wonder and joy of play is in every single one of us.
Objective
Since its foundation back in 1976, Decathlon has always targeted professional sports stars and amateur athletes alike by designing products for all sports, all people and all levels. Yet, despite the business’ scale, Global CEO Barbara Martin Coppola (appointed in 2022) believed that the brand voice wasn’t speaking to the heart of existing customers, future audiences and its target market.
So the brand’s CEO and marketing team briefed Wolff Olins to rebrand in order to support the a business strategy that focused on shifting Decathlon from a French retailer to a ‘future-fit global sports brand’.
Following a two-year collaboration, the resulting rebrand stretches across strategy, design, internal culture, customer experience, communications and marketing and encompasses all Decathlon touchpoint: from the visual identity and the product portfolio, to the omnichannel physical and digital customer experience.
The new strategic approach is built around the role sport play in lives today and how the wonder of sport isn’t tied to winning or achieving perfection, but rather to enjoyment (and wellness). This resulted in a new purpose for the organization: ‘to move people through the wonders of sport.’
Activation
To launch the new brand, Wolff Olins’ Omnicom network sister creative agency AMV BBDO crafted an integrated, international and extensive campaign built around concept of ‘play’. The idea is, in a world full of stresses and pressures holding too many people back from enjoying sports, Decathlon asks them if they are ‘Ready to Play?’ and then supports them in doing just that.
The bold question acts as both a brand invitation and rallying cry to focus on and rediscover the delight of spontaneous movement and seeks to develop a deeper connection between individuals, the brand and the world of sport.
The campaign content features a primary copy line reading: “Play is what we’re made for. So, are you ready to play?”
Teased 48 hours before launch, the full 360-campaign debuted during an official launch event in Paris on 12 March before rolling out across its global markets on the same day.
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Spanning 70 markets throughout the launch month, the integrated campaign is spearheaded by a hero ‘Ready To Play’ 60-second film. Helmed by Director Hector Dockrill through Magna Studios, the film blends original and found footage and celebrates sport as it is played and enjoyed by real people around the world. From kids to grandparents and from beginners to professionals, everyone in the spearhead spot picthed as being ‘united by the spirit of play’.
The anchor ad runs also runs in 30-, 15-, and 6-second versions across TV, digital and social media.
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The supporting out-of-home campaign, featuring stills shot by Tom Sloan, also captures the joy of real people at play across a range of sports.
“Today marks a very special moment in both the history and future of Decathlon. Now more than ever, business needs to be a force for good and we hope that by moving people through the wonders of sport, we can do that while building a new narrative for the category. From day one, the Wolff Olins team has been a close partner in driving this transformative vision forward with us, navigating the brief with considered detail and aplomb. We are overjoyed to reintroduce Decathlon to our customers, our teammates, our partners and our communities today, and really celebrate the start of a new era for our global business.”
Decathlon Global Chief Executive Officer Barbara Martin Coppola
“We understand that the role of sports to people worldwide is evolving, and our new brand directly reflects this changing dynamic. It unites all of Decathlon’s customer initiatives and elevates how we go to market in a fresh and playful way. Wolff Olins’ customer-centric approach to the development and design of the brand will help connect people of all levels with Decathlon and enable them to make sport theirs, on their terms. AMV BBDO have done a fantastic job heroing this through the concept of play in the launch creative. Huge congratulations to all involved, it’s been a real ‘dream team’ collaboration.”
Decathlon Global Chief Customer Officer Celine Del Genes
“From the start of our journey together it was clear that Decathlon is special – it deserved a brand that matched its heritage and its ambitions. Decathlon has always been for everybody; a sportsmaker, misunderstood as a retailer. A democratising influence in sport, fast becoming a leader in circularity. But above all, its aim to simply bring fun, joy and wonder to people of all levels and abilities. We have honoured this with the new brand and identity, which is an open invitation for all to move in their own way. It has been inspiring to work so closely with the impressive Decathlon leadership and we couldn’t be more excited to see how they will continue to innovate and bring the wonder of sport to the masses.”
Wolff Olins Global Executive Creative Director Emma Barratt
“Play is at the heart of the Decathlon brand, from their stores to their people and now, in their communications. We’re delighted to share Decathlon’s unique, democratic and people-centred approach to sport with the world. We hope that this work, which is our first in partnership with the brand, inspires people everywhere to find that joyous spirit within themselves and get out there and play.”
AMV BBDO Executive Creative Director Laura Rogers
The relaunch introduces a new tone of voice and set of motion design principles. In terms of the visual brand assets themselves, the relaunch features a tweaked version of the existing wordmark (something that has remained fairly similar during Decathlon’s entire history),a custom Decathlon Sans typeface and an entirely new logo – called L’Orbit – which aims to convey movement and circularity and feature prominently on all products.
The rebrand strategy also includes streamlining a portfolio of 85 sub-brands into one unified Decathlon brand.
By sales revenue, Decathlon is the world’s third biggest sportswear company. But its consumer recall and brand standing remains far lower than sector behemoths Nike and Adidas and even smaller competitors like Asics, Under Armour, Puma and Reebok.
Perhaps this campaign will start to change such perceptions and position the brand as a maker more than a seller?
Our initial reaction is that we like the overall strategy, design and creative approach and it does seem to sit squarely in the sportswear brand space rather than the retailer landscape.
Much of the work successfully amplifies the emotions of sport like enjoyment, connection and adventure, and celebrates movement, participation and progress. But some might argue that it lacks a distinctive brand attitude. And some of the OOH, print and digital executions do edge a little towards vanilla tech brand territory (think Intel or HP).
Compare and contrast the new approach with some notable Decathlon campaigns from the recent past such as 2021’s ‘Ability Signs’, ‘Get Outside’ and the (somewhat conceptually similar idea to the rebrand) ‘First Rule Of Sport Is To Play’ and ‘Let’s Play’, plus the award-winning ‘The Break Away’ and ‘Sport Makes The World Better’.