It’s been a memorable 2014 for Kevin Plank.
FN’s Person of the Year and his company, Under Armour, have received several more honors in recent weeks, including Yahoo Finance’s company of the year award, announced today. Advertising Age also recently named Under Armour its marketer of the year.
Plank, meanwhile, was a Fortune businessperson of the year and made another prominent list of five top CEOs, put together by Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management and associate dean for executive education at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
The awards came after $3 billion Under Armour scored big this year with a major focus on footwear and a much-buzzed-about “I Will What I Want” women’s-focused campaign.
In the last quarter, the athletic firm’s footwear revenues rose by 50 percent to $122 million, from $81 million in the same period a year earlier. What’s more, overall revenues for the quarter totaled $938 million, up from $723 million the prior year.
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“Kevin is always trying to do better,” New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, a brand spokesman and Plank’s good friend, told FN in November. “That’s what drew me to [the brand]. And it’s why the consumer base is so loyal. They stand for everything you want to be. They are cool. And they’re great performance.”
“I Will What I Want,” featured Brady’s wife, model Gisele Bündchen and Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn. But it was ballet soloist Misty Copeland, as the centerpiece, who captured the public’s fascination as an untraditional picture of the female athlete.
“To tell our company, let alone the entire market, that our ads launching for back-to-school not only are not about football but that we are going to feature a ballerina — people weren’t saying we were geniuses,” Plank recalled. “But Misty struck a chord that was so authentically Under Armour. Here’s this ultimate underdog, who wasn’t supposed to be here, who didn’t go to the right school, who didn’t come from the right background, didn’t have the right build, but still found a way to overcome and persevere. There is nothing more Under Armour and nothing more American.”
Read all about Kevin Plank’s FNAA award here:
