Page 152 - Overthrow_Black&WhiteVersion

How did you identify the Under Armour athlete? And to what extent did you want them to embody that underdog mentality too?
Kevin and the marketing team were always looking for the humble and hardworking. Not everybody we signed was like that. But, generally speaking, we were going after this work ethic in the athlete. I mean, it’s about authentic people. When you meet these people, you just know they’ve lived their sport.
Later, as we got better at it, we created a bunch of filters and words and feelings that we always wanted to put people through. But in the early days, it was just Kevin and his team on the sports marketing side just using their gut.
You couldn’t afford the big player, but the athletes and their growth went hand in hand. Kevin was
a magician. Literally every person he picked did something amazing. You look at Tom Brady and Bryce Harper and Misty Copeland and Lindsey Vonn – these people were with us for a long time.
Do you motivate the team with this sense of fighting the ‘big guys’?
The underdog mentality, the David and Goliath concept was very clear to us. But you didn’t sit there and talk about the size of Goliath’s shoes, because then it would create fear in your own mind or your own organisation.
151