The Pop-Up Pendulum is Swinging

Small, intimate and at its best offline. It's the antidote to self-indulgent hype and spectacle. Can big budgets and publicly traded ick even compete with such a pure experience?

The Rec Room in Boston. Nash Howe of Currently on those window clings.

Like many boring expos where insurance or roofing companies desperately offload shitty branded pens, keychains and mousepads, the traditional race expo died a long time ago. Out of the ashes, the independent brand pop-up felt like a fun refresh while we all wrapped our heads around the newness and possibility. These pop-ups brought us energy from lines that stretched for a block in anticipation of cool things like custom posters, conceptual photo booths and limited merch drops.

Over time, however that brand pop-up evolved to feel far too opportunistic, forced and predictable. Those cliché shakeout runs now feature a mass of 1,000 people and an experience that’s neither intimate nor deep and rewarding. Bigger, louder! That’s what people want and that’s how our brand will stand out! These pop-ups have become a place for PR teams to engineer “authentic” moments for influencers to create reels about their latest big product with big sales expectations. Engagement and numbers will win! They became experiences manufactured in a board room to hit metrics - fully disconnected from the mood of runners on the street. Like the parent who thinks they’re doing what’s best for their child despite it being years since they stopped to realize their child’s interests have changed. They’ve unwittingly begun to impart their own hopes and dreams on us kids.

That’s right, our palate is changing and a new flavor is making its way onto our plate. Why do we even enter lotteries to run these major marathons and ultras when we could run those distances on our own anytime and anywhere for free? It’s the camaraderie of course. To find our people and revel in the atmosphere and shared experience.

But brand pop-ups have become more about them than us. More about shiny objects and business goals than the runners. We’d much rather a brand reflect our own experience - not theirs. Turn a mirror on us, our mindset, mood, aspirations and style. Less “we have to sell you stuff” and more “we know where your head is at”.

Would you rather be a part of the “shared experience” at a time-share presentation or at game night in a friend’s basement?

Images from Lee at The Sweat Lookbook

This past weekend Cole Townsend partnered with Lee Glandorf and Katherine Douglas on a multi-brand pop-up called The Rec Room. I know what you’re thinking, there have been multi-brand pop-ups before, it’s not a new idea. You’re right, sort of. Now that Adidas kicked everyone out of the official Boston expo, Marathon Sports brings a load of brands together in a multi-brand pop-up space. It’s well intentioned but still feels like a collection of separate booths that just happen to live in the same space. Each brand exhibits in a vacuum with no uniting idea or theme. There’s no vehicle to create a shared experience. Like your race distance, it could be done anywhere at anytime.

There were at least 12 brands that slid unselfishly into the Rec Room concept. The vision of a rec room created a relatable vehicle to activate within. Like a great vintage shop you could spend time and explore all of the hidden gems and details at your leisure. Speaking of vintage, Cole effortlessly incorporated a trove of vintage treasures around the Boston Marathon. And if you’d rather just hang out, there was space to partake in some soul nourishing Super Nintendo games from the 90s that provided a (gasp!) offline entertainment experience. Seriously though what a luxury that has become.

Cole's vintage capsule. He also threw down a challenge on Super Smash Bros. Photos from Lee and Katherine (Running Wylder).

The Rec Room brought brands together with the relaxed vibe of a casual hangout in your friend’s basement - intimate and personal. No pressure from sales or engagement metrics. There may have been a Currently branded cooler on a shelf next to shoes from RAD but there wasn't a booth for either brand. It wasn’t about any of them individually. They all came together to build something bigger than themselves. Much like the race itself, it was about the shared experience they all contributed toward.

This is what happens when you set aside financial and institutional barriers. The Rec Room idea wasn’t contingent on hitting a corporate mandated ROI target. There wasn’t a hierarchy of approvals that slowly diluted the concept. It was the result of people coming together who, through their own passion for the space, are naturally tapped in to the mood of the runners on the ground. Entrepreneurial people and brands that busted their asses for the love of the game. As Katherine Douglas put it:

What we need more of are small, underproduced pop ups like ours. Or like the one next to us. Ones that offer a distinct point of view and an openness to ideas. Ones that are less concerned about how they might show up on socials and more concerned about how they might form lasting connections with those who pass through their doors.

Now I don’t know what the bigger brands will do with this (if anything). It leans far into long-term brand work at the expense of quarterly metrics and CFOs scoff at such silly talk. I don’t know if the inherent nature and publicly traded ick of the big brands can get out of the way enough to show up for runners so honestly. It might not be possible. It might be yet another reason we see small brands flourish while big brands fumble window signs (ahem). It’s just the nature of running. It strips you raw and leaves no room for bullshit.

If it’s not obvious by now, I think these small conceptual pop-ups are the new thing. They bring people together in more personal spaces and foster a deeper and more intimate experience. If they become too popular and overcrowded they die and new ones are born. It’s a never ending cycle of creative evolution and discovery that operates at a scale meant for humans as they’re intended to operate - offline. They are the pendulum swing for the ballooning activation madness we’ve seen these past 10 years.

Writing all of this made me think of a post I saved that looked at the conditions for creativity that emerged in downtown NYC in the 80s. I’ll leave you with this and let you think through any parallels that might be drawn to modern day running.

For even more on The Rec Room, check out the BTS articles from both Lee and Katherine. I believe Cole is in-progress on an article as well so check Running Supply with Cole Townsend as well.

Also along a similar sentiment, I wrote about “What If Quiet Were Cool?” back in October. I posed a lot of questions including: “Does “running culture” connect with the runners exhausted by chaos and fanfare? What if quiet actually connected with more people?”

This post is free because I hope to spread this way of thinking to the furthest corners of the earth. That being said, hit that subscribe button if you want to access the paid articles or if you’d like to angle for me to buy you a beer in person.