Two miles in, a homemade “Run Jane Run” sign went viral on TikTok, proof that in London, even the sidelines can hijack a trend before the elites hit Cutty Sark.
Click here to download our latest footwear market report.
Introduction
A record 56,640 finishers, an estimated 800,000 spectators and a soft-spring sun turned the 2025 TCS London Marathon into the world’s longest catwalk, and the sharpest single-day stress test the footwear market has seen all year.
Footwear is already a £10.7 billion UK industry and forecast to keep climbing despite consumer caution.
But when 112,000 shoes pound 42 km of billboard-lined tarmac, paid spend alone won’t cut through the noise. This article unpacks how four brands, Nike, Adidas, New Balance and Bandit won (or lost) attention on the day, and where the search data says the money will be made next.
Market context
Size and growth
The UK footwear sector closed 2024 at roughly £10.7 billion and is projected to expand at 5% CAGR into 2034—fuelled by fitness, athleisure and post-pandemic “treat” purchases.²
That growth masks heavy volatility: Salience’s latest index shows an industry-wide 14% visibility swing year-on-year, with winners such as Nike (+27%) and Hunter Boots (+125%) outpacing laggards like Office (-14%) and StockX (-37%).³
Visibility scorecard (April 2025)
| Rank | Site | Est. organic traffic | YoY% | Comment |
| 1 | sportsdirect.com | 5 830 568 | +8% | Scale wins, but brand searches still low.³ |
| 2 | nike.com | 5 597 452 | +27% | Marathon bump + evergreen demand.³ |
| ▲67 | on-running.com | 52 242 | +632% | Challenger surge—Swiss efficiency meets TikTok hype.⁴ |
Campaigns that cut through
Nike – Winning isn’t comfortable.
Nike wrapped Regent Street in its “RunTown” pop-up: free sign-making turned fans into walking billboards; demo zones shifted Pegasus units on the spot; medal engraving kept finish-line queues snaking past product displays.
Gritty OOH copy (“Remember why you signed up”) drew nods, but the “Never again, see you next year” strapline sparked backlash for Holocaust echoes—proof that one lazy line can scorch a six-figure spend.
Search interest in “Nike marathon ad” peaked at 93/100 on 29 Apr and trended for 36 hours.
SEO note: Nike’s deep product hubs outrank competitors on non-brand terms—but schema errors still hamper FAQ visibility. Fix the markup, bank the free clicks.
Adidas – Let the clock do the talking
Adidas shelved gimmicks and let elite feet speak: the Adizero Adios Pro Evo 2 carried Tigist Assefa and Seb Sawe to podiums in London and Boston, generating a max-index spike (100/100) for “Adizero” searches on 28 Apr. The minimalist “Adizero Activation” booth pulled a performance-first crowd and amplified post-race user-generated content without any “look-at-me” signage.
Balanced verdict: Adidas wins credibility; loses casual eyeballs it could have retargeted later.
New Balance – The sponsor’s safe bet
Year eight as official footwear partner delivered the “New Balance Townhouse,” a free café-cum-watch-party dripping in illuminated white roses.
TikTok racked up 12 m views of runners engraving medals for friends—proof that small perks beat big billboards in the share-game. Searches for “New Balance Townhouse” jumped from zero to 65/100 by 26 Apr.
2.4 Bandit Running – Guerrilla cool on beer money
Brooklyn-born Bandit teamed with local crew Runlimited on a William-Morris-wallpapered pub pop-up and micro-drops of fashion-forward kit. Zero paid, zero controversy, modest reach. Yet the brand landed in all the right running-fashion newsletters—priming future collabs.
Seasonality strategy
- Q3 back-to-school: High-intent keywords such as “boys school shoes” (19 k monthly UK searches) offer low-competition headroom—perfect for content-led SEO.⁵
- Autumn race season: Spikes for “men’s running trainers” (18 k) start eight weeks before the race. Brands that release training-plan hubs (and link to products) capture both discovery and checkout clicks.
Tactics in action
| Tactic | Brand | What worked | SEO upside |
| Pop-up experiential | Nike, New Balance | Turned fans into content creators | Fresh backlinks + local press mentions |
| Athlete proof-points | Adidas | Credibility over gimmick | High-authority sports coverage boosts E-E-A-T |
| Community co-creation | Bandit | Authenticity with micro-crews | Long-tail keyword wins (“best street-style running kit”) |
Quick calc: 112,000 shoes ÷ 56,640 runners = 2.0, proof every runner still buys both boots. The second sale is safe… for now.
Engagement → conversion
- Brands with high traffic but low brand search (e.g., Office) sit in Quadrant B of Salience’s Brand-vs-Traffic grid, which has great rankings but weak recall. A digital PR push could add top-funnel heft.⁶
- Conversely, high authority, low traffic “sleeping giants” (Loake, Russell & Bromley) need crawl-budget fixes before courting links.⁷
- Page speed still matters: According to internal analysis, half a second shaved off Nike’s product pages netted a 5% uplift in mobile CVR (public case study pending).
Key takeaways
- Human first: free coffee and medal engraving beat a six-figure billboard.
- Crystal clarity: athlete-led proof outperforms slogan-driven hype in search.
- Commercial outcomes: On Running’s +632% visibility shows challenger upside.
- Lasting value: fix schema and page speed before chasing the next hashtag.
- Avoid sloppy SEO: keyword-stuffed race-day pages vanish once the gun fires—build evergreen hubs instead.
Conclusion
The 2025 London Marathon proved that a single Sunday can rewrite a quarter’s brand-awareness curve—if you marry crowd chemistry with search-ready content. Whether you’re a legacy giant like Nike or a pub-pop-up rebel like Bandit, the lesson is the same: meet runners where their feet—and thumbs—already are, then let visibility do the heavy lifting.
P.S You can get the latest footwear report here.
P.P.S We’re a specialist ecommerce agency with 15+ years of experience.