Rise of the Personal Brand; Sport Focus

Im Kay, i’m one of the designers here at Kitsune Studio and one of my passions outside of work is climbing. This has got me thinking about climbers and how their image is changing alongside the sport, but more thinking about athletes and their personal brands. How does an athlete's personal branding help them achieve their goals of being a professional.

What is a brand? When thinking of a brand we think of think of companies such as Coca Cola and Apple. We think of the white lettering and the red background that could say anything - but still we know it as Coca Cola. A brand to a lot of people is a logo and a colour scheme. Now, that’s all fine for a company, but how do you go about branding a person? Do we still need the traditional staple idea of a logo and colour scheme as if they are a product? Or, is the person enough to stand on their own? Athletes such as Roger Federer and Andy Murray have their own strong personal brand. To them this includes having a logo and a website; but does this give them a stronger personal brand?

Personal branding is other people’s perception of you. Everyone has their own brand whether they know it or not. A small task is to google yourself, what comes up? If you yourself do in fact come up in your google search, that is your image/brand. It is what others see when they've Googled you or found your page on Facebook. Your brand is your identity.

If you had to be a sports brand who would you be and why? Is it their company ethics, products, social media channels, reviews, brand icons, who they sponsor or what events they sponsor? There are many factors that influence our decisions when choosing a brand and it's the same for athletes, or do they choose them ?

A professional athlete’s personal brand is one of the biggest contributors to their funding and sponsorship opportunities, alongside their performance in the sport. A strong personal brand for an athlete often brings money, opportunity and fans. This can be hard to view as negative for an up and coming athlete - or even one that has already made it. A personal brand is always about growing and maintaining a positive image by the people who’s opinions matter.

One of these ways of portraying and strengthening a brand currently is through social media. With a strong social media presence, an athlete is given a strong image which can be portrayed as a brand. A strong social media presence can be formed through platforms such as Instagram,Facebook and Twitter. A small proportion of athletes have the own websites, some are actually quite good.

An athlete with a strong social media following such as Shauna Coxsey, Sasha Digiulian, Paul Robinson and Rustam Gelmanov makes for a strong athlete to sponsor. It is not unheard of for companies to choose their athletes based upon their following just as much as their performance. If they have a similar ethos to the sponsors it makes them a more attractive athlete to work with and it allows their product to reach the athletes followers as well as its own. For example Paul robinson is sponsored by Prana and Friction Labs, these are a clothing company and a chalk company. Prana the clothing company is an ethical company that produces clothing for active climbers and yogis. From Prana's point of view if paul robinson advertises their products on his Instagram page it is reaching possibly 50% more of the climbing community than just using pranas Instagram alone. It also allows the followers to see the product in use, an image of what it could be like if they owned this product developing an image for the brand or developing a brand.

Athlete websites are becoming more and more popular. Most athletes aim their website at one of two audiences; either the business market or their fans. The websites aimed at fans consist of blog posts, galleries and facts about their most recent achievements, whereas the websites aimed at the business side of things seem to outline the social reach they can achieve. Shaun White, a professional snowboarder, has a website that clearly highlights how many followers he has across various social media platform, along with sections which are focussed more on him as a person. These sections show potential sponsors what type of person he is. Another page shows the relationships he has with his current sponsors and recent listings such as the ‘Forbes; Top 40 valuable athlete brands’, all of which add appeal to potential sponsors and partners. These pages are helpful to a potential sponsor as it highlights the key information they need to reduce their search.

These websites solidify an athlete’s brand and give them a platform to display current sponsors and achievements and a place to host links to social media sites. Professional climbers Alex Honald and Ashima Shiraishi have websites that are littered with full bleed images of them doing amazing, aesthetic big wall routes. This captures interest in the adventurous outdoor look, solidifying their branded image of being leading athletes in their field, which promotes an active, exciting, and athletic outdoor life. This then leads us to follow them on Instagram, Facebook and other sources of social media so that we can keep up to date with their lives.

So, having a strong personal brand can reflect well on business and on an athlete’s overall career. This is evident especially in sports like climbing, where the sport is still up and coming and has not yet had a wide media coverage. Social media sites are our first port of call for anything new and interesting within the climbing world. Social media also gives the athletes a perfect platform to promote their sponsorship and in the future I think there will be more websites emerging related to the sport.