Allyson Felix teams with Hello Sunshine’s Solar for Saysh ads, takes swipe at Nike in the process

Retired Olympian and track and field athlete Allyson Felix celebrates the female form, in all its forms, in a campaign that takes aim at her former sponsor Nike in promoting her newest sneaker under her Saysh performance footwear brand. A pair of spots for the new "Felix Runner” shoe champion a woman’s individual right to “run” her life however she sees fit. The campaign is meant to show that the sneaker is made to support all women in their daily lives, whether they are athletes, mothers, protesters or all of the above. The “Run Your Own Race” campaign—developed by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine’s in-house social agency Solar—includes a billboard that will purposely be located near Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Ore., to serve as a subtle reminder of Felix’s troubled experience with the brand. “So many of these historic apparel and shoe athletic brands, and you see this with Allyson’s story, they treat women differently or they reduce their contracts when they're pregnant, et cetera,” Solar SVP Jennifer Wiener told Ad Age. “We created a campaign that looks to empower women to run to the beat of their own drum, to chart their own unique path and to chart their own legacy to guarantee that they always win.” Felix, the most decorated American track and field athlete in history, parted ways with Nike and accused the company in a 2019 New York Times op-ed of financially penalizing her for becoming pregnant—saying the company wanted to pay her 70% less after becoming a mother. She co-founded Saysh in 2021 with her brother Wes Felix, who serves as CEO, in a clear challenge to Nike. Felix wore her Saysh sneaker during the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo as part of its official debut. Solar handled all aspects of the creative development of this campaign, including production and social strategy. It will include a big social push, with six-second iterations and influencer partnerships. Wiener said, as part of the campaign, Saysh will encourage social media users to share what they “run for”—for example, “I run for my legacy. I run for my mother. I run for a more equitable future. I run from nothing. You'll see it come to life in a variety of different ways across platforms,” Wiener said. Solar and Wes Felix had a mutual connection and the partnership kicks off with this campaign, Wiener said. The goal is to drive awareness for the brand; what is unique about the Saysh shoe is it was “designed and built on a mold of a woman's foot ... many other brands [have] always been done on a mold of a man's foot,” she said. "When you start telling people about the brand, they get so excited about it,” Wiener said. "It was the perfect partner for us to land. It’s not our first campaign by any means, but it's probably the one we're doing the biggest splash around as we get this agency into the zeitgeist and into more people's considerations. I couldn't have designed a better partner for us to go to market with.” Hello Sunshine, part of Candle Media, launched social agency Solar in March of this year, “dedicated to working with brands that wanted to build meaningful, positive and long-lasting relationships with women,” Maureen Polo, Hello Sunshine's head of direct-to-consumer, had told Ad Age previously. Solar has so far worked with marketers including Hulu, General Mills and AT&T. Nike has responded to the backlash it’s received around its maternity policies by introducing new pregnancy terms for athletes, developing its (M) maternity line and—right after Felix founded Saysh in 2021—releasing a five-episode wellness video series hosted by retired Olympian Sanya Richards-Ross that delved into the Black maternal experience. That work was criticized by some Felix fans aware of her background with Nike. Felix has taken subtle digs at Nike in previous campaigns, including in a 2021 ad for Logitech, which she used to create her line of shoes. In that spot, Felix had said the computer software company empowered her to “take on giants” (i.e., Nike) and challenge “old logic” that says you can’t be a mother and an athlete.

Allyson Felix teams with Hello Sunshine’s Solar for Saysh ads, takes swipe at Nike in the process

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