Supporting the sweat and tears of London Marathon runners with Buxton

Client: Nestle - Buxton

92% of London Marathon runners joined Buxton's Strava challenge. 50% completed it. Brand consideration jumped considerably, and value share grew.

But here's the breakthrough: Buxton became the first brand to transform a marathon sponsorship into a year-long mental health movement, using real-time running data to deliver personalised support when runners needed it most.

Facing commoditisation in bottled water (consumers switch between 3.8 brands regularly), Buxton innovatively connected hydration to the UK's post-pandemic mental health crisis. Partnering with Mind and leveraging their London Marathon sponsorship, they created the first-ever integration between running app data and mental health advocacy.

The technical challenge was unprecedented: building bespoke Strava integrations to deliver personalised congratulations at mile 20—the notorious "wall"—for 50,000+ individual runners across 12 months of training.

Combined with authentic 'Rise Up Runners' stories and synchronised gym partnerships, this created the UK's first purpose-driven, data-responsive marathon campaign.

The result? Transformation from commodity to catalyst. Buxton proved that sports sponsorship can evolve from one-day activation to year-long advocacy platform, establishing the blueprint for purpose-driven marketing that drives both social impact and commercial success.