Boost to come for Brooks after Kerr’s run?

At the Novuna London Athletics meet on July 18 Josh Kerr ran the mile in 3:42.66, shaving – no, hacking – nearly half a second off Hicham El Guerrouj’s world record time of 3:43.13, which had stood for 27 years. Kerr did it in a pair of Brooks, but not any pair of Brooks.

Kerr’s Hyperion 222s had been designed to suit his particular biomechanics and running pace, and Brooks matched the shoes to a custom speed suit. Both were the fruit of Project 222, so named for the number of seconds it would take to beat El Guerrouj’s time.

World Athletics is still running its standard ratification, but Kerr’s performance has given Brooks a nice peg for some marketing.

First time

Brooks has had its moments. Des Linden won the Boston Marathon in 2018 and set a women’s world record over 50k in 2021. Kerr himself ran a world best for two miles indoors in 2024. But Brooks celebrated these achievements after the fact, having built no campaign or special shoe for a charge toward the target of a single race.

Project 222 partakes of a genre established by the likes of Nike, Adidas and Hoka with the advent of carbon-plate shoes, in 2016. Brooks, deriving most of its growth so far from retail share and volume rather than record chasing, has chosen now to contribute – and chosen track over road.

And when the target is missed?

Nike’s Breaking2 project failed to breach the two-hour marathon barrier by 25 seconds in 2017; Hoka’s Project Carbon X 2, the 100k world record by 12 seconds in 2021; Nike’s Breaking4, the four-minute mile by more than six seconds last year. None of these episodes registered as a failure at the time, because each still yielded up material for a press release: fastest marathon ever run, 50-mile world best along the way, fastest mile run by a woman.

Adidas ran its own sub-two-hour marathon project in parallel with Nike’s, under the Adizero Sub2 shoe. It failed, produced no superlative to serve for consolation, and has all but vanished from anyone’s account of the era.

The objective, it seems, ought to be not success in itself but a worthwhile thing to say.

The numbers nobody sees

Whether this increases sales is another matter, and unclear. Nike and Adidas report footwear revenue by region, by channel and by broad category (running, basketball, the Jordan Brand), never by shoe model. Brooks, privately held under Berkshire Hathaway, discloses no product-level figures at all, and in 2022 declined to break out even total revenue. The evidence for a “record effect” is circumstantial.

Sabastian Sawe broke the marathon world record in Adidas’s Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 this past April; the shoe sold out in pre-orders within minutes and resold on StockX at prices ranging from $1,671 to more than $3,000 a pair. The evidence here derives from a resale marketplace, not from the company’s own books. Nobody outside Brooks and Adidas has a number for what Kerr’s or Sawe’s race has done for sales, and neither company is likely to publish one.

And the shoe itself?

The record books hint at yet another story. The marathon world record has fallen roughly one to four years or so since 2011, before and after the advent of carbon plates. The record for the mile stayed put for 27 years. It rode out the whole period during which spikes went the same way as road shoes – until, that is, Kerr’s race last month.

If shoe design drives record-breaking, why has the mile proved so stubborn? Does engineering count for more as distances get long? Do the tactics and pacing of laps on a track obviate tech? There have been relatively few attempts at the mile, because championship races like the metric 1500m instead. Surely number of attempts matters! For brands, though, what counts is what can be shown to the customer.