Great Run Chooses Matta For 2018

The Great Run Company has enlisted MATTA to update its positioning through a strategic brand review and new communications campaign.

Founded in 1981 by former Olympic athlete, Brendan Foster, The Great Run Company creates and delivers mass participation sports events, including the Simplyhealth Great North Run. The Newcastle based company plans to communicate its proposition by tapping into core emotional drivers to motivate its participants in what is a very competitive market.

Catherine Foster, brand strategy director at Great Run, said: “MATTA’s immediate understanding of our strategic requirements was superb, and the creative implementation has been fantastic.

The overarching campaign – Be Your Greatest – launched earlier this month to coincide with the opening of the entry ballot for the Simplyhealth Great North Run and will be followed this week with the roll out of  a specific campaign to support the Simplyhealth Great Manchester Run which takes place on May 20th 2018.

“For the first time since our inception over 30 years ago, Great Run has a very clear articulation of our values and what we deliver to our customers on a real emotional level, serving to make our communications more powerful and as a result improve the longevity of our events so that we can enable more and more people to be their greatest through taking part.”

Alice Millican, social media manager at Great Run said: “MATTA’s  ‘Be Your Greatest’ campaign captures the spirit and energy of what it feels like to be part of a Great Run event – conveying personal achievement and our role in helping people be the best version of themselves.”

MATTA’s senior brand and strategy manager, Lauren Babcock, added: “The task was to identify the Great Run’s core brand identity and emotional participation drivers which makes any of the Great Run events uniquely “Great”.”

“For the target audience, as an individual pursuit, running a Great Run needs to be about personal achievement, not competition against others. Be Your Greatest, exemplifies this personal goal.

“Everyone has ‘greatness’ inside them, and running a Great Run is about unlocking it, and going further than anticipated.”