Creative Corner: run into old age, enjoy an introvert's holiday and watch where you wipe your Wet Ones

Corrections and clarifications this week.

It’s generally believed that runners should expect to hang up their trainers as they get older. That introverts would rather avoid people altogether. And that a hand wipe is a multi-use piece of kit. 

The following three brands would like to put the record straight, and with way more than a press release, here’s what stood out to me this week.

Altra signs the runners who never stopped

According to research commissioned by Altra, the average British runner stops running at 39. A third of those who quit blame injury, and more than half of the runners surveyed have had a setback that kept them out for three months or longer.

The American footwear brand's answer is ‘The Legacy Team’, which it bills as Britain's oldest running team: Peter Giles (82), Rajinder Singh MBE (79), Laurence Cummings (85) and Pritpal Kaur (75), with a combined age of 321. Giles took up competitive running in his forties and is hailed as the country's fastest octogenarian over 5km. Cummings holds 204 age-category parkrun records. Kaur is the oldest British Asian woman to finish this year's London Marathon, and she did it while living with blood cancer.

Brandnation's campaign is built around a handover, as the four pass on what they've learned to runners in their twenties and thirties to help them build habits that last; that advice is the heart of it. Giles thinks young runners overtrain and overcomplicate things, and says he talks to his own body mid-run to decide how the session should go.

The campaign will run across PR, social, retail and events over the coming months, anchored with lookbook-esque portraits of the runners by Rankin: in sorbet colours, tinted shades, bright socks captured mid-leap and mid-sprint, too.

Marketing director Rob Herdman says the idea began at races, where his team kept noticing runners in their seventies and eighties, not necessarily the fastest, and thinking they'd like to be that one day. And it joins the growing aspirational campaigns that put older people at the centre. But there is still a gap: when the ASA surveyed UK adults last year, 44% said older people are under-represented or missing from ads altogether.

My favourite part is the second moment, as later this year Altra will publish The Long Run: a free book of the team's advice. Portraits and social posts have a shorter shelf life, but a book of tips from people who've been at it for decades is something you can hold on to, pass on, or go back to when the first injury arrives.

Visit Sweden sells the ultimate ‘fika’ holiday

I, for sure, know the feeling of getting back from time away, dropping the suitcase in the hallway and needing some decompression via a lie-down. 

Nearly half of the people in Visit Sweden's YouGov survey say they sometimes need a holiday to recover from their holiday, and the tourist board has decided there's a business in that.

The Introvert Travel Agency is its online agency for trips around Sweden, with pop-ups in Berlin (14 to 17 October), Paris (21 to 24 October) and London (28 to 31 October, at 3 Paddington Street in Marylebone). Prime Weber Shandwick made it, and it's fronted by a deadpan film in which a seemingly nervous travel agent sells Sweden as a paradise for people who'd rather skip the small talk, with room to roam and personal space treated as a way of life.

As expected, there’s some nice data to back it up. Across nine countries, 41% of people call themselves introverts, 45% say they're a mix of both and only 14% say extrovert. Of the travellers surveyed, 67% prefer destinations where mingling feels optional, and 53% say they'd pay extra for more peace, privacy or fewer crowds.

What I particularly like is how it frames introverts, who often get written off as either shy or people who'd rather avoid everyone. The film ends with the agent biting into a pastry and confirming that Swedes do enjoy company, as long as it's structured, which means fika. Visit Sweden's CEO, Susanne Andersson, describes social being an option rather than an obligation. Psychologist Mattias Lundberg of Umeå University makes the same point: for introverts, recharging is less about being alone and more about having control over when and how they interact. Absolutely.

The country is set up for it, too: Visit Sweden's materials point to low population density, to the right of public access (allemansrätten) that lets visitors roam nature at their own pace, and to a culture where a coffee on your own is unremarkable. It's also very on brand for a tourist board that has made a habit of joking about the country's clichés, of course.

Wet Ones hands New York a very clear message

Take what people get wrong about your product and make it the creative. It's an old formula and it tends to work every time. Wet Ones has been making hand wipes for more than 50 years, and the brand says this is its first major campaign in a while, so it was a great choice to go big with a bit of cheeky, too.

The insight is from a OnePulse study by the brand which found more than half of Americans have admitted to using a hand wipe on an intimate area. Rather than cough politely and move on, Wet Ones made the whole campaign about it. BBH USA and photographer Ale Burset posed fingers, palms and knuckles so they read as bare bottoms. The line is "No ifs, ands or butts" (hence USA as ‘No ifs, ands or bottoms’ feels more like a polite complaint).

The launch began with a fake scandal. Gossip account DeuxMoi posted what looked like a revealing photo of TV personality Kyle Cooke, and the speculation did its job until it emerged that the bottom in question was his hand. Wet Ones then stepped in to reveal the campaign behind it. According to the brand, New York City transit declined to run the ads underground, apparently because the creative looked too risqué. That tells you the illusion works, and it gave the campaign a headline it couldn't have written itself.

So Wet Ones went above ground and made the city the gallery: kiosks, bus shelters, digital newsstands, a Times Square takeover, wild posting across the city and two wrapped buses. Sampling walls hand out wipes- which at least puts the product where it's meant to be. A social contest invites people to submit their own hand butts/bottoms for a chance to be shown in Times Square.

BBH's executive creative director Yohan Daver describes the aim as getting you to stop, look again and then land on one simple point: these are for hands only. For that to work, the illusion has to feel completely real, and a hand has to pass for a butt for just long enough that you stop, squint and only then get to the bottom of it. These do.

That's it for this week's Creative Corner!

If you’ve seen something that’s caught your eye, or if you’ve been working on something you’re particularly proud of, please do get in touch via emily.barnes@fanclubpr.com. I’d love to hear about it.