Nick Cronk, Co Managing Director, CP West
When it comes to athletic endurance, I’m fascinated by what humans are capable of.
Specifically, their ability to push through significant suffering and absolute misery in the pursuit of remarkable physical feats.
British endurance swimmer Ross Edgley has swum around the UK (without touching land) and Iceland, during which he suffered such extreme chafing to expose raw flesh, Lion’s Mane and Bluefire jellyfish stings, and a decomposing tongue from all the salt water. Ultra-runners Courtney Dauwalter and Jasmin Paris have set countless long-distance running records (including breaking those previously held by men) pushing through severe hallucinations caused from sleep deprivation and brutal physical punishment (Courtney hospitalized herself in 2020 following a FKT attempt on the Colorado Trail). And climber Kevin Jorgeson was having to superglue the skin together on his fingers during a 19-day ascent of The Dawn Wall.
And while perhaps not as extreme as these examples, many of us have experienced what it’s like to push through our own physical comfort levels, whether that’s a running a 10k or a marathon, a sprint or full distance triathlon, or some other random endeavour (I’m signed up to for an “Everesting” mountain race this summer).
The question I keep coming back to is: what part of our soul pushes us to endure such discomfort, and go to such extremes, in the pursuit of these crazy goals?
It’s not as if fame and fortune are the drivers for the athletes in these obscure sporting worlds – the financial gain and notoriety are simply not comparable to the likes of what mainstream sport athletes see. Similarly, in the amateur world, not only will the majority of us will never see a podium or prize money, but we’ll actually spend thousands on race fees, coaches, apparel, nutrition, physio, fitness trackers, footwear, and everything in between.
The answer matters, because it’s the force that dictates how we interact with the world as consumers.
If we market strictly to the brain, we miss the point entirely. Logic alone can’t explain why an amateur athlete will happily sacrifice sleep, spend thousands of dollars, and push through physical agony just to cross an arbitrary finish line. They aren’t buying products; they are funding a belief system.
For CMOs, the lesson is clear: if you want to change consumer behavior, you have to look past the transaction and look at the transformation.
At Connelly Partners, this is our north star. We know that in a world full of noise, you can’t just ask people to take action. We move customers’ feet, by first moving their souls. Because when a brand taps into the deep, irrational emotions that drive human behavior, they don’t just win a customer. They build an obsession.
