☕ Underneath it all
Inside Under Armour’s move to reconnect with its football roots.
Marketing Brew <[email protected]>
Morning Brew promotes its latest edition, featuring an article on Under Armour's marketing strategy, particularly its renewed focus on football. The brand is highlighted as redoubling down on the sport with a modern marketing spin, including NFL sponsorships and flag-football partnerships. It also touches on Advertising Week in New York.
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600 words · about 3 min to read
October 06, 2026
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Presented By
Sponsor Logo: Walmart Connect
It’s Tuesday. It’s also Advertising Week in New York. Drop us a line if you’ll be around!
In today’s edition:
Under the hood 🏈
The state of the CMO, part four 🔮
—Alyssa Meyers, Kristina Monllos
SPORTS MARKETING
Starting line
An illustration composed of three stills from Under Armour's most recent ad campaign, including players in a locker room wearing red jerseys, flag football player Diana Flores wearing a white Under Armour shirt, and football players including Justin Jefferson wearing an Under Armour shirt
Morning Brew Inc, Photos: @underarmour/YouTube
Earlier in his career, Eric Ogbogu, a former NFL defensive end, was the face of Under Armour, fronting the brand’s iconic “Protect This House” campaign from the early aughts.
Today, he’s worked there for almost two decades, now serving as a director at the company.
In a sense, Ogbogu personifies Under Armour’s marketing strategy. The brand has roots on the football field; founder and now-CEO Kevin Plank has said he came up with the idea for the brand when he played at the University of Maryland (where Ogbogu also played college ball). While football has always been a part of Under Armour’s DNA, Ryan Collins, senior director of global sports marketing, told us, there have been recent years when the sport wasn’t necessarily front and center in the company’s messaging.
“We never got away from it,” Collins told Marketing Brew, but “we maybe weren’t as intentional all the time about speaking to football and telling that story.”
Now, Under Armour is redoubling down on the sport—this time with a more modern marketing spin that extends from traditional moves like an NFL sponsorship to forward-looking bets like flag-football partnerships. The push comes on the heels of basketball star Steph Curry parting ways with the brand after more than a decade.
As an international, endemic sports brand, Under Armour’s marketing teams around the world are focused on a variety of team sports, Collins said, but in the US, football reigns supreme: nearly a third of Americans named the sport as their favorite this year, according to Gallup, even though that percentage has declined in recent years. With Under Armour’s North American revenue down 9% YoY in its most recent quarter, the company’s marketers stateside are betting that football can help them tell the brand’s story while also driving business growth, he said.
Continue reading here.—AM
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THE STATE OF THE CMO
The future of the CMO
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