No, not that kind of performance marketing. Real technical performance credibility is the new luxury and today’s brands aren’t just competing on product, they’re competing on proof.
Part of an ongoing sports investigation by edition+partners, this series analyses fast-growing brands in modern sporting culture. It draws on data from 94 brands spanning 127 years, with over 2,400 data points that allow us to cross compare brand growth, social demography and technical credentials, alongside interviews with leading experts and the founders driving change from within the industry. This edition features the Show, Tell, Prove model and case studies on Represent 247, Satisfy, ON and North Face.
If price and quality remain the two biggest global purchase drivers, the shift is that customers now have a far more sophisticated understanding of what “quality” really means — and they expect brands to prove it. As performance culture accelerates, brands are being forced to justify credibility in ways they never had to before.
Zara Athleticz pulls the category down, premium players like Satisfy stretch it up, and the middle has become a battleground of innovation, aesthetics and narrative. The real question is whether customers are buying performance or the story wrapped around it. The PB, or the performance myth? The product, or the occasion?
Which is why the central thesis of this piece is therefore simple: as performance converges, brands need a new competitive edge. We call it 'Performance Marketing 2.0™': the art of making performance felt, not claimed.
Walk into any running store today and you’ll be hit with a wall of sci-fi fabric names: Justice™, Everlux™, AeroReact™, LightSpray™, CloudTec®, PWRRUN PB. Each trademark promises something — lightness, breathability, speed — yet few of us can explain what any of it actually does. And if customers can’t decode it, how do brands expect them to make informed choices? Perhaps the better question: do customers even care about the science, or do they care about how it’s sold?
Our research aims to answer exactly that. It asks how modern performance brands communicate credibility, how they justify price, how they build desire, and ultimately, why certain brands win at the cultural level, not just the functional one.
What emerges is a model for the modern performance brand. The best brands Show, Tell and Prove their performance credentials and turn raw technical ability into cultural meaning.
Most brands lean on just one of these. The best integrate all three, transforming technical performance into cultural performance. This is the playbook driving the most resonant, fastest-growing brands in sport today.
PERFORMANCE MARKETING 2.0™
When performance converges, brands have to work increasingly hard on how they communicate performance, not just what they make. For years, performance marketing has been relatively simple: show the product, list the technical attributes, bring those attributes to life creatively and hopefully an elite athlete will do the rest. This worked in an era when the audience is niche or when true technical advantage was rare and guarded by the Nike's of this world.
But as an increasing amount of challenger brands are able to compete on the performance stage, as technical innovation converges, and as the mainstream becomes more performance-literate, the old playbook stops cutting through. Features alone don’t differentiate. Mood films alone don’t persuade. And the athletes who once validated product now compete with thousands of creators doing the same.
The modern performance brand has to do something different. It has to market real performance in a way that is emotionally compelling, technically credible, and culturally resonant. This is Performance Marketing 2.0™.
They do this by orchestrating three complementary modes: Show, Tell and Prove. Show builds the world. Tell builds the logic. Prove builds the trust. Most brands lean too heavily on one. The best integrate all three, turning technical capability into cultural meaning that speaks not just to hard-core athletes, but increasingly to the mainstream.
SHOW | Creativity, Story, World-Building
Show is how a brand performs emotionally. It’s the cinematic universe around the product — the campaigns, films, visual codes, language, identity and the broader world the brand invites you into. Show gives performance meaning by making the product feel like it unlocks something bigger than the material. It conveys aspiration rather than instruction: the sensation of speed, freedom, grit, altitude. And it creates symbols that become shorthand for the brand’s technical promise — tear-away labels, recurring motifs, ambassadors who feel like characters in an ongoing story.
Show is ON x Loewe's craft of movement collaboration platform, how Represent 247 transforms athletes into mythic protagonists, or how On uses architectural retail design to make innovation feel spatial and real. It’s the world the product belongs to.
TELL | Construction Detailing, Certification, Validation
Tell is the rational spine: the engineering, the facts, the construction logic. It’s everything most brands rely on but perhaps don’t share enough detail on: weight specs, UPF ratings, elastane percentages, mesh placements, recycled content, third-party certifications. Tell clarifies what the product actually does, cutting through abstraction to reveal the mechanics behind the promise. It reduces perceived risk by showing that function isn’t fantasy. And it builds authority, because the clearer the explanation, the stronger the trust.
Tell is expressed through Satisfy’s impressively detailed product pages, when Circle sportswear collaborates with Tencel on an event, On’s LightSpray dissections, or The North Face’s Tech Talk series. When done well, Tell elevates the product from a sealed black box to a piece of understandable engineering.
PROVE | Transparency, Community Review, Athlete Authority
Prove is the evidence. It’s where claims meet real-world conditions. This is performance under pressure — not in labs but on the Moab 250 course, at Boston, on K2, across Iceland. It’s where credibility flows from expert to brand, carried by elite athletes, guides, ultrarunners and mountaineers who put the product through extremes. And it’s where social proof accumulates through community runs, wear-testing programmes, challenges and everyday user diaries.
Prove looks like Max Jolliffe’s Moab documentary, or Hellen Obiri winning Boston in an early LightSpray prototype. It’s also brands like UNNA including review sections beneath their products where the community confirms what the brand claims.
The following case studies show how Satisfy, On, Represent 247 and The North Face each orchestrate Show, Tell and Prove in distinct ways and why this combination has become the defining competitive advantage in the modern performance market.
SATISFY
The performance running apparel from Paris-based running brand SATISFY is notoriously expensive, with its entry-level ‘Space-O’ shorts retailing for £150. Despite being over double the price of competitors like Nike, it’s managed to consistently increase revenues by working harder to sell, and justify the price of, its products. How?
One way SATISFY does this is by making technical details that are usually invisible, visible. There are two key examples here: the brand’s signature tear-away product labels and its extensively detailed product pages. The first converts technical aspects like garment makeup and product numbers into a design feature and status symbol that makes the SATISFY brand instantly recognisable, while being synonymous with technicality. The latter turns small details into a narrative opportunity to teach customers how the garment works, why that fabric choice matters, and what conditions it’s built for. Terms like ‘thermal insulation’ are laid out in plain language, positioning SATISFY as an authority educating viewers on the construction of performance apparel.
Feeding into both of these are SATISFY’s branded technologies, each of which have their own unique attributes and act like sub-brands in their own right. Innovations like PeaceShell™ act as planets within the brand’s wider brand universe, acting as a platform for content, tone of voice and visual identity. ‘Justice’ fabric ‘moves like a second skin’. ‘Rippy’ is more than Italian ripstop fabric — it’s ‘engineered for resilience and release’ and helps SATISFY consumers easily identify and differentiate the brand’s wind resistant products.
Then there’s the SATISFY Pro team. What better way to justify the price of performance apparel than to feature it on athletes at the pinnacle of the sport? Long-term ambassador Max Jolliffe is only ever seen in Satisfy. His self-produced Moab250 documentary serves as a 52-minute advertisement for the brand, with each scene doubling as proof-of-concept.
SATISFY introduces, showcases and maintains attention for their products by using real professional athletes to model for campaigns, like The Ranch earlier this year. For potential customers, this does two things: 1) Makes SATISFY products aspirational by associating them with extreme use-cases and peak condition runners, 2) Validates the price and quality, as the average SATISFY customer does not demand as much out of their gear as someone who requires it to make a living.
ON
Like SATISFY, On uses innovation as a platform for storytelling. Proof of the brand going the extra mile is shown by their high-tech stores. The brand works with design studios like Tomorrow Beureau and Modem Works to create interactive in-store elements to translate product attributes and design elements. Features like robotic arms and polished steel interiors position On as innovative, creating a halo effect that justifies the brand’s premium pricing.
On also justifies its premium positioning by using moonshot innovations as marketing spectacles that position the brand as highly innovative to its consumers. First introduced in 2024, LightSpray is a technology developed by the brand that creates ultrathin, seamless shoe uppers through a precision spraying process automated by a robotic arm. Since its debut in the Cloudboom Strike LS running shoe, the impressive technology has gone viral and led to athlete achievements like Hellen Obiri’s victory at the Boston Marathon in 2024.
Like Obiri, On’s selective roster of athletes play a vital role in validating its technologies. Like other case studies covered here, On works harder than its competitors to sell products by working with those at the pinnacle of their sport. But unlike other brands that treat sponsorship as a mass game, On has been intentional from the off, bringing in key figures like investor Roger Federer for their personality and achievements. From podcaster and ultrarunner Rich Roll to tennis player Ben Shelton, these figures aren’t just product users that authorise performance credibility, they’re relevant personalities in culture that drive attention and conversation. By keeping its sponsorships tight and intentional, On has created a close knit family feel of sponsored athletes that build credibility and culture around the product, not just eyes.
REPRESENT 247
Unlike SATISFY and On who deliberately showcase technical product attributes and their innovation credentials in order to justify their premium positioning, Represent247 does far less. You won’t find highly technical product pages, intricate fabric breakdowns or tech-forward in store displays. So how does it convince its audience to buy?
First, they also have a pro team, but it's geared towards content. 247 understands the popularity of the fitness landscape and has masterfully built its crew around the best.
Viral athletes like William Goodge (run across Australia) and Russ Cook, A.K.A Hardest Geezer (run across Africa) act as both ambassadors for the brand, but also characters in 247’s brand world, which is all about fulfilling one's own personal mission (‘On a Mission’). Their ambassadors might not win Olympic golds, but they inspire millions to push their own boundaries. The product, then, becomes synonymous with that mantra.
Longer form content like the ‘Mission Iceland’ documentary treats this crew like characters in 247’s movie, and helps to showcase the product in its most demanding conditions. This prompts the audience to create parasocial bonds with ambassadors, and to consider buying the product to be part of the club.
Finally, 247 also does more than other brands around the community. From community runs in New York and Manchester to brand owned challenges like 247 Rivington, these events position 247’s product as technical merchandise for a brand cult, rather than extremely technical gear. Combine this with the fact that the brand’s apparel is cheaper than competitors, followers of the brand are happy to pay the premium to be part of this wider movement.
THE NORTH FACE
The North Face uses a mix of content, events and product details to justify its premium positioning.
The brand’s content is a balance of educational and inspiring, simultaneously acting as an authority on outdoor sports, and presenting its products in it. Series like Tech Talk brings credibility through professionals that dissect their favourite gear, while The Mountain Mentor series taps climbers and ultrarunners for tips and hacks, from packing to hydration. Meanwhile, documentary-style content like the film "K2: Chasing Shadows" shows products in their most extreme and aspirational environments, putting the brand top of mind and inspiring its customers to explore through using its products.
The North Face does more than other brands when it comes to events too. Moments like Tomorrowland winter festival, Transgrancanaria, and Climb Festival give the brand visibility at outdoor events where their customer appears, and positions The North Face and its products as complementary to an aspirational outdoor lifestyle. Its XPLR pass members programme capitalises on this, incentivising purchase through access to exclusive Basecamp events, discounts and athlete meets.
When it comes to POS, product pages are rich with details around use cases, product benefits, and details on fabrication. For its more expensive products, product vignettes show video and photography mixed together to help with outfit styling and interest around quality.
Closing Thoughts
Performance used to be a contest of grams, seams and fibres but today its also a contest of story, identity and credibility. The products have never been closer but the brands have never felt further apart. Performance Marketing 2.0™ is the recognition that in a world of converged product, the real advantage belongs to brands that can make performance felt.