Elite marathon coverage ends the moment the tape breaks. The cameras follow the winners off the course. The post-race press conferences begin. And somewhere behind all of it, thousands of runners are still out on the road, hours into a race that most of the world has already moved on from. CLIF Bar decided that was exactly where the story was.
What the Campaign Did
Final Finishers is CLIF Bar’s integrated campaign for the 2026 TCS London Marathon, developed with Ogilvy UK and Ogilvy SocialLab, built entirely around the runners who finished last. Not as a consolation piece. As a straight celebration of endurance.
Photographer Flynn Duggan photographed the final finishers, runners who had been on their feet for over eight hours, in a style borrowed directly from premium sports editorial. Glossy. High-contrast. The kind of photography brands reserve for podium athletes and Olympic champions. The subjects were people who finished 56,714th. The visual treatment did not indicate that.
The OOH copy did the talking. “First place took 1:59. Last place took everything.” “Congrats to the 56,714th winner.” Each line reframes finishing position as a measure of effort rather than speed, without dismissing the achievement of either end of the field.
The Finish Line Activation
In a first for the TCS London Marathon, CLIF Bar took over the secondary finish line in St James’s Park on race day, building an experiential cheer zone specifically for the final runners coming in on the home stretch. The activation was led by sports marketing agency SPORTFIVE, with volunteer supporters, CLIF Bar pacers who had accompanied the final participants on the course, and the Team Finish Together group creating a reception at the finish line that matched, in energy if not in broadcast coverage, what the front runners received hours earlier.
Press interviews were organised at the finish line to generate earned media with UK consumer publications, putting the final finishers in front of journalists as the story of the day rather than a footnote to it.
The Positioning Behind It
CLIF Bar is an established energy bar brand in the United States, with significantly lower recognition in the UK. The London Marathon provided a platform with 56,000 plus participants, and a massive broadcast reach to build brand relevance with British athletes. The choice to anchor that platform on the final finishers rather than the elite field is a deliberate positioning play.
Most sports sponsorships at marathon events go upward in the field. Brand imagery features sub-three-hour runners, PB celebrations, and elite wave starts. The audience for that content is aspirational but narrow. CLIF Bar went the other direction and built its entire campaign around the people who took twice as long to finish. That audience is larger, more broadly representative of who actually runs marathons, and almost entirely underserved by sports marketing.
CLIF Bar’s origin story supports the positioning without forcing it. The brand was first created in 1992 on a 175-mile bike ride. Its marketing director, Bianca Harvey, used that origin to frame the campaign’s logic directly: the true endurance champions are often the ones at the back of the pack, and the brand has a personal understanding of what it takes to dig deep and persevere.
Dani O’Donnell, managing partner at Ogilvy UK, identified the precise gap the campaign fills. With so much attention going to who runs the fastest, the determination required to keep going as dusk approaches and spectators go home is a story nobody had told properly. CLIF Bar told it, and gave it the visual production values of a Nike elite campaign.
The broader context gives the campaign additional weight. The same weekend, Vaseline was running its “Official Nipple Protector” activation along the same 26.2 mile course. Nike was still recovering from the backlash over its “Walkers Tolerated” sign. The London Marathon had become a brand battleground in 2026. CLIF Bar found the one lane none of the bigger names were standing in: the finish line, hours after everyone else had gone home.
Campaign Name: Final Finishers
Agency Name: Ogilvy UK / Ogilvy SocialLab / SPORTFIVE (sports marketing)
Brand Name: CLIF Bar (Mondelēz International)
Location: TCS London Marathon, London, United Kingdom
