A Grammy, Tony and Emmy winner is not the obvious face of a performance running brand. That is precisely the point.
Brooks Running has launched “Shine Under Pressure,” a campaign starring actress and long-distance runner Cynthia Erivo ahead of the 2026 TCS London Marathon on April 26. The Seattle-based brand is using it to make its first serious push into EMEA. According to CMO Melanie Allen in an interview with Marketing Dive, it is the company’s most globally ambitious marketing effort in recent history.
After delivering record growth in 2025, Brooks restructured its senior leadership in March, giving Allen a broader mandate covering both brand strategy and retail experience. “Shine Under Pressure” is the first major campaign to come out of that expanded brief.
The runner behind the actress
The case for authenticity holds up. Erivo has worn Brooks footwear for years, set a personal best of 3:35:36 at the 2022 London Marathon during peak Wicked rehearsals, and is now training toward a 3:15 finish at this year’s race – a 20-minute improvement on her lifetime best. Her coach is Erika Kemp, a Brooks-sponsored professional marathoner brought in as part of the partnership.
The creative, produced by Brooks Running Creative Lab and MBooth, takes a diaristic approach. Erivo narrates “A Love Letter to the Run,” an open letter to the running community drawn from her own training journal, framed around footage of her morning runs alongside her West End commitments. She is currently performing a one-woman production of Dracula at London’s Noël Coward Theatre – portraying all 23 roles, eight shows a week, for 16 consecutive weeks – while averaging six to ten miles a day.
The campaign also includes social content tracking her training progression, and a live podcast appearance during marathon weekend on Nobody Asked Us, the distance-running show hosted by US professionals Des Linden and Kara Goucher, which Brooks sponsors.
London as a new front
This is Brooks’ first year activating at the London Marathon through what it calls the Hyperion House format – a runner-facing hospitality and community hub it has deployed at other World Marathon Majors. The race gave the brand a natural anchor: Erivo wanted to run London, and the event offered visibility in a market where Brooks has less consumer recognition than in North America.
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The audience logic is straightforward: Erivo has a global following that skews younger and more culturally diverse than a traditional running audience, and their marathon credentials are credible enough to support Brooks’ performance positioning. The goal is to bring new consumers to Brooks without moving away from its sub-elite runner core.
The partnership extends beyond race week. Brooks has announced limited-edition merchandise inspired by Erivo for later in 2026, and further brand storytelling tied to the autumn marathon season is planned.
A century-old brand still moving forward
Brooks occupies an unusual position in the global running market: a century-old brand that still competes as a challenger. Its community-first model – built around marathon events, club partnerships and grassroots running culture – has helped it gain ground against larger rivals in recent years. The Erivo campaign pushes that model higher up the awareness funnel and into markets where brand recognition still has room to grow.
Dive deeper
Cynthia Erivo is a British actress, singer and producer. She won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for The Color Purple on Broadway and received Oscar nominations for Harriet (2019). She is currently starring in Dracula at the Noël Coward Theatre, London. As a runner, she completed the 2016 New York City Marathon (3:57:07) and the 2022 London Marathon (3:35:36).
