Employer Branding
Decathlon's biggest competitive advantage isn't just its products, it's its people. Every teammate is hired because they genuinely participate in sport, bringing first-hand experience and passion to every customer interaction.
Following our national brand refresh, we saw an opportunity to showcase the people behind the brand through a locally produced campaign that celebrated our teammates, strengthened internal pride and helped customers understand what makes the Decathlon experience different.
Employer Branding
Branding
Content
Culture
Storytelling
Employer Branding Branding Content Culture Storytelling
The Context
As a relatively new challenger brand in Australia, one of Decathlon's greatest strengths was often overlooked. While competitors relied on traditional retail staff, our stores were filled with runners, cyclists, hikers, surfers, skiers and athletes - all who genuinely used the products they recommended.
At the same time, the recent global rebrand had introduced a new visual identity across the business. We wanted to help teammates connect with the refreshed brand while creating more authentic storytelling that resonated with Australian customers.
With a limited production budget, the challenge was to create a campaign that felt genuine, elevated the brand and celebrated the people who brought it to life every day.
The Insight
A customer connect with people before they connect with brands. Our teammates weren't simply retail employees, they were the living expression of Decathlon's values of Responsibility, Authenticity, Vitality and Generosity, and one of our strongest points of difference on the market.
By placing real teammates at the centre of the campaign, we could humanise the brand, strengthen customer trust and reinforce the expertise customers would find in every store.
The Execution
Working with our in-house creative team, we developed a low-cost brand campaign that celebrated the people behind Decathlon and the sports they love.
The campaign featured teammates from across Australia, highlighting both their sporting passions and their expertise, demonstrating that customers were receiving advice from people who genuinely understood the products they sold, including everyone from our CEO to our casual floor teammates.
The project included:
Creative concept development centred on authentic storytelling.
Local photography and content production featuring real teammates.
Campaign rollout across digital, retail and internal communication channels.
Brand messaging aligned with Decathlon's refreshed visual identity
Showcasing teammates across a broad range of sports to reinforce the breadth of the Decathlon offer.
Supporting employer branding by celebrating team culture and reinforcing organisational values.
The result was a campaign that strengthened both internal engagement and external brand perception, while remaining highly cost-effective through in-house production.
The Impact
The campaign helped shift the conversation from products to people, reinforcing one of Decathlon Australia's most authentic brand strengths.
Internally, it created a greater sense of pride and ownership following the brand refresh, celebrating teammates as ambassadors for the business rather than simply retail staff.
Externally, it humanised the brand, strengthened customer trust and highlighted the expertise available in every store, bringing Decathlon's purpose and values to life through the people who represented them every day.
Internal employee sentiment of campaign 100% positive from internal survey.
Represented teammates across all areas of the business from digital, services and store and teammates.
Average higher engagement rates on Instagram content than other content.
Career page traffic grew +11% year on year.
Improvement in mystery shopper scores for service by 7% month on month in flagship stores where content was rolled out, compared to stores where no in store merchandising was done.
