Written by: Vicky Bullen, CEO
Holy sneakers and space spread: why ‘accidental’ marketing moments are organic rewards These moments aren’t accidental. They are organic. And they are available to any brand willing to do the work to earn them.
When Pope Leo was photographed wearing a pair of vintage Nike trainers recently, the internet briefly lost its mind. No endorsement deal. No collaboration. No stylist briefed by a brand team. Just the new pontiff in his robes, and a pair of shoes carrying the Swoosh. Like the jar of Nutella that floated past an astronaut aboard the Artemis II mission the month before, it’s being hailed as one of the great unintentional marketing moments in recent memory. However, describing these moments as “unintentional” or “accidental” creates a narrative implying that anything outside of contracted campaigns and activations is just pure luck.
A gift from the branding gods that fell out of the sky. When, in reality, it is a result of years of strategic brand building that integrates products with culture. Pope Leo XIV is a documented White Sox fan who grew up in Chicago during the peak of the Michael Jordan Bulls era, two teams with which Nike is synonymous. So, should we really be surprised when a sports fan from Chicago chooses the brand that is woven into the fabric of a city’s sports teams as his preferred sneaker? Celebrities and public figures have passions just like everyone else and are just as susceptible to brand association and loyalty as anyone else. If a brand has spent years embedding itself into a culture or community, it will find its way into the lives of people shaped by that culture. That’s not luck. That is brand building working as it should. Brands that earn these moments do so with the most clear and concise idea of what they stand for and who they stand for it with. With Nutella, this connection goes even deeper. While Nike has been able to build this connection with sport, Nutella has done so with something even more intimate. Family. Nutella’s brand positioning has been rooted in the idea of “everyday happiness”, small, ordinary moments that hold family life together. Weaving its way into generations of families through 60 years of consistent messaging that goes beyond just advertising. The 2014 campaign, inviting fans to share their personal memories of Nutella, or the personalised jar initiative that let people print their own name on the product, were expressions of a brand that represented the emotional connection it had built across its audience. When a brand can own a territory as clearly and consistently as this, it goes from a nice to have’ item to an essential. No more obviously demonstrated than an astronaut delegating a portion of his Personal Preference Kit to a large jar of Nutella. Creating a taste of home 252,757 miles away.
No paid campaign could have manufactured that feeling. But decades of consistent, emotionally intelligent brand building made it possible, creating the kind of emotional resonance that people instinctively reach for, whether they’re heading to the school, the office or the moon. These moments aren’t accidental. They are organic. And they are available to any brand willing to do the work to earn them. But how does a brand make its own luck so to speak? It starts with positioning. A ruthlessly clear message on the emotional territory a brand owns and sticking to it. Not having a new platform or message every couple of years, but expressing the same feeling across different channels. Nutella found its positioning in 1967; the method varied, but the message never did. Then it comes to looking beyond advertising and for places in people’s lives and in culture you can own. Rituals, communities, experiences, sports teams and more. Letting the consumer own the brand, not simply purchasing it. Brands need to ask themselves the honest question: do they genuinely belong in parts of people’s daily lives, habits and culture? Have they earned the right to be there? If the answer is uncertain, there’s work to do. Lastly, it’s about patience; belonging is slow, compounding work that can’t be shortcut by a single campaign. The question shouldn’t be “how do we go viral?” but instead “have we built something real enough that we would be missed if we weren’t there?”. In branding, the moments that look accidental are often the ones that brands have spent years earning. Nike, Nutella or any other brand that has these moments should be celebrating their rewards, not marvelling at a stroke of fortune. While competitors shouldn’t be sitting there wishing it had happened to them, and instead wondering why they didn’t, and getting to work.
