How Parkrun Open Sources its Mission to Welcome over 2.5M runners in Local 5Ks Around the World

Parkrun is a global charity that puts on free 5Ks around the world, offering a playbook for community brand building marked by mission, milestones, rules and roles

Who will love this

• Couch-to-5Kers

• Lifelong runners

• Community marketing junkies

• People who love getting beaten in 5Ks by 11 year olds with their shoes untied (hello, hi, it’s me)

Today

G’day.

You’re getting a late in the day note from me, fresh off a plane and feeling a bit jet-lagged - but the show goes on ✈️

Today’s brand is a brand that doesn’t have a flashy identity. It doesn’t have a brand manager. And it doesn’t even sell anything (shocking! I know!). But it is a brand that has built the largest hyper-local, global run club that I’ve heard of (please do reply if you know of a bigger one!) without selling a thing, and for that reason I think it’s brand worth looking at.

Why am I writing about this brand? Last Saturday after a pre-wedding drinks in England’s Lakes district last week, a Minnesotan, a Brit, and myself piled ourselves into a campervan and got our slightly dusty selves to parkrun on Saturday morning.

For the uninitiated, parkrun are a global charity that organizes free, weekly 5K and 2K events in parks and outdoor spaces. On a mission to change the world for the better through running, parkrun have:

• 2.5M registered runners globally

• Over 1,000 events weekly

• Over 10,000 new runners signing up each week

Why is this interesting? I’ve seen at least 6 ‘Are run clubs the new dating apps’ headlines in the last week so we’re at some sort of a running tipping point, I think. I also think we’re going to see many brands continue to attempt community marketing, with varying degrees of success. Just see Bandit’s membership program, Tracksmith’s less discount-y and more racey Hare A.C. membership, and run cafes like Knees Up in London and Runners Station in Tokyo: running is hot and getting hotter! 🔥

But while Nike Run clubs and Lululemon events happen in major cities, what I find interesting about parkrun is that they have staying power (and reach) that big running brands could only dream of.

👀 But: this just in: while writing this piece, I did find out that Brooks sponsors parkrun USA, which is a very smart move, in my opinion.

Let’s take a lap and see what we can learn from parkrun!

📣 Community shoutout 📣

Before we jog on, a quick shoutout to Jason Little, founder of For the People and my former creative director, for very generously sharing the Case for Brand on LinkedIn. I’ve learned so much from Jason and am always thrilled to be making new connections: good people know good people, as they say!

To my new readers: please do reply & let me know what you’re liking, longing for, and what you’re thinking about in regards to the brand world!

Know someone who’d love a brand nerds-eye view of the world? Your referral link is at the bottom of this email 🔗.

How parkrun Built a Global Run Club without Selling a Thing

1. Start with an explicit why

🎯 Parkrun know why they exist. I’m not enamored with the mission statement verbiage itself (I’m partial to a more straight-talkin’ mission statement - I’d have loved to see the words community 5K in there, for example), but I love the language on the page surrounding the mission statement.

For all the hullaballoo that’s made about purpose and mission statements, very few companies do the hard yards of asking: what do these words mean and what decisions will we make as a result? parkrun do this well, in part because they have to - their events are run by volunteers, so they have to be explicit.

If you’re trying to get people to achieve something together that they don’t have to do (i.e. you’re not paying them), you need to be crystal clear on why they are gathering. ✨

2. Centralize the rules, decentralize the roles

Parkrun do an exceptional job of centralizing the rules (see the mission statement page, above) that their volunteers need to follow while decentralizing the roles required to scale the brand and organization’s impact.

A common misstep in branded communities is not letting members truly take ownership of the community.

Communities need a semipermeable membrane that’s easy for people to enter, but also structured enough that relative newcomers can navigate, see and understand how to participate. Here’s a few examples of how parkrun do this:

• Sign up is dead simple: new runners get an automatically generated barcode (effectively, a cheap timing chip) to use at any parkrun in the world

• Newcomers can easily spot course marshalls (pink vests), pacers (wearing projected 5K times on blue vests), and the start line (huge parkrun signage)

• Every runner gets a timed result emailed out to them a few hours after the race

For parkrun to be successful in building an inclusive running community, they need to provide enough structure to create a consistent experience (rules) while making it easy for newcomers to step into their operating system (roles).

3. Reward and recognize the committed

Good communities build alongside their community by recognizing and rewarding their committed members. This is completely different from the traditional command and control way of releasing a marketing campaign, but it’s a far more effective way to mobilize massive groups of people to achieve things, together.

For parkrun, the community is the product.

Parkrun do an exceptional job of recognizing and rewarding their most committed members.

For example, parkrun release milestone tee shirts that signify the number of runs a participant has logged.

What I think is important here: rewards aren’t necessarily monetary. A reward can be a role (volunteering), recognition (a 250 milestone tee shirt), or responsibility (setting up a new parkrun chapter).

Three things to love and learn from parkrun

One of the hallmarks of a truly successful brand is the ability to scale beyond a charismatic founder or founding team and mobilize other people to evangelize on their behalf: parkrun has achieved this. Here’s three things that anyone building brands with their communities can learn from.

• Make your mission explicit. Make it so easy to explain that it could be done in a sentence over a bbq, after a few drinks.

• Define the roles needed to make your community work. Start to decentralize them: open them up not just for employees, but for those who most embody, empower, and embrace the mission.

• Recognize and reward your most committed community members. Build rewards and recognition for the members of your community who are most committed: and remember - rewards don’t mean money.

👀 Brand scoops catching my attention this week

• Building a very successful portfolio of stocks based on Glassdoor reviews and Best Places to Work lists

• The impact of the British phone hacking scandal on the Washington Post’s brand

• This Vacation Erewhon smoothie

Viva parkrun ✌️ And that’s all from me. Jet lag and Covid recovery tips welcome 🙏 

Amanda

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