It’s a hot girl summer for Athleta.
Around the time of the last Summer Olympics in 2021, the Gap-owned women’s activewear brand made news when it signed a deal with Simone Biles, who severed ties with Nike in favor of Athleta. For this year’s Paris games, which kick off next week, the brand is going big with Biles again with its first-ever national linear TV ad and other marketing activations revolving around its “Power of She” platform designed to support women and girls in athletics.
“We’re not doing this because it’s trendy,” CMO Ilona Aman told Marketing Brew. “It’s where we’ve been. Now, it’s just putting that on a bigger platform and a bigger stage with the right partners that share the same values.”
The revolution will be televised
The decision to run an ad on national TV for the first time is largely about relevance, Aman said. Since she joined the brand from Fabletics earlier this year, the Athleta leadership team has been focused on “reinvigorating the brand,” she said, and the Olympics presents a major opportunity to do so.
“The Olympics is one of the very few times in sports where people come together and actually watch things live on television, versus just the catch-up or the highlights that they might find on social media,” Aman said.
The ad features Biles flipping in slow-motion to show the “insane aerodynamics of what Simone can do,” Aman said, and is set to the refrain “because she can” from the song “Oral” by Björk and Rosalía. It’s a not-so-subtle reference to Biles’ response to a question about why she continues to perform such difficult moves, in which she said, “Because I can.”
The spot started running on June 15 and is set to continue through the games on NBC and Peacock, as well as YouTube and social media. It’s also slated to appear on Netflix, which is releasing a docuseries about Biles starting July 17—from July 1 through September 14.
Athleta in Paris (and beyond)
In addition to the TV ad, Athleta is extending its campaign to the Marais district in Paris. For about two weeks, the brand is hosting a series of events meant to celebrate the progress women have made in sports, according to Aman.
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The activations include panel conversations in partnership with other women-led brands like the Female Quotient and Goop, in addition to various movement-focused classes to help people on the ground at the games manage “the chaos of the hustle and bustle,” Aman said. The brand will use those events to generate additional content for Athleta’s social channels to reach the US audience.
Back in the states, Athleta will host workouts during the games period at its stores in nine markets including Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, as well as run a postcard initiative tied to the “Power of She” platform, where Athleta is making postcards available in its stores for shoppers to write notes about women they admire. For each postcard that’s filled out, the company will donate a dollar to its The Power of She Fund, which gives grants to women and girls in partnership with the Women’s Sport Foundation.
In the run-up to the Olympics, Athleta also sponsored the ESPYs, and presented the award for the best college athlete in women’s sports, which went to Caitlin Clark. On the heels of the games, the brand plans to lean into its recently inked partnership with Katie Ledecky, Aman said. All in all, she said Athleta’s work during and around the games is meant to strengthen its connection with women consumers and boost the brand’s overall relevance in culture.
“For us, it’s definitely the long game,” Aman said. “The summer is definitely where we’re overinvesting and having that dialog with [women] to then set us up and use that as a catalyst as we continue to grow with [them] in the seasons to come.”