4.2 Shaping Taiwan’s Female Road Running Scene
4.2.3 Female Road Running and the Media
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4.2.3 Female road running and the media
From the perspective of media and sporting goods manufacturer that jointly
generate women road running, the appearance of the stylish road running magazine
Running Life has a close connection with Taiwan’s female road running scene. In
contrast to masculine sports magazines, Running Life shows a refreshing transparency
in terms of design, paper selection, color, and composition. It is hard to believe that
Running Life was once intended to be developed as a general magazine that included
many fields, as reported by its editor (interviewee M1). As its targeted readership was
once unclear and the conditions under which it had to survive were harsh, the magazine
was compelled to reinvent itself as a road running magazine, especially owing to the
demand of sporting goods manufacturers (Nike, Adidas).
The manager of WongHe PR & Marketing (interviewee RO1) reports that in the
Greater China region, Taiwan was the earliest and most influential place in which Nike
developed road racing. After the first female road running race in 2011, the next three
years were dedicated to gradually cultivating a basic customer group and
communicating the concept of correct exercise. In 2014, Taiwan Nike female road
running officially expanded from a ten kilometers fun run to a twenty-one kilometers
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half-marathon. The number of participants increased from 7000 to 18000 people. Nike
has been the main protagonist of Running Life since its first issue in 2013, such that
Running Life has become an important medium for Nike to promote female road
running. By 2016, of the already published fourteen volumes, there were two special
issues of Nike female road racing, and seven of the other twelve volumes pictured
women on their front covers. While product placement accounts for half of the
magazine content, Running Life and sporting goods manufacturers plan to lead
Taiwanese female road runners to a new form of exercise and lifestyle.
In an interview, the editor of Running Life (interviewee M1) mentioned his
disappointment and dissatisfaction at the lack of design and beauty in Taiwan’s
magazines. This was one of the reasons that his magazine was attempting to do
something different from traditional sports magazines. In particular, it was attempting
to follow Number Do, a road running magazine under the Japanese sports illustrating
magazine Number. Describing Number Do, the editor of Running Life (interviewee
M1) characterized it as, “beautiful, with interesting topics, and a strong sense of life”.
The chief editor of Taiwan’s life magazine One Day, Huang Wei-Rong(黃威融), once
said that Number has a unique style and impressive content and composition. By
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comparison, the reason Taiwan’s magazine is missing this sense of beauty might be
the fault of its realistic style, as the editing clearly seeks to share information as a
priority (黃威融 Huang Wei-Rong, 2015). From Number Do’s twenty-fifth cover,
more clues might be seen. Different from traditional sports magazines that use male
athletes on the cover, Number Do uses hand-drawn pictures to present its theme. The
feet of the runner step on an urban Tokyo, making them look much bigger than Tokyo
Tower and other buildings, almost as if the runner is dominating Tokyo. This looks
really interesting. From the clean composition, vigorous font, and bright colors of
Number Do, we can sense a design and lifestyle that is different from other traditional
sports magazines.
Beginning as an emulation of Number Do, Running Life has ensured its uniqueness
among Taiwanese sports magazines. This has been achieved by combining the pursuit
of beauty, design and life with sports. The combination of sport and life is concretely
presented in two basic themes: eating (sharing recipes, introducing restaurants, and
nutrition analysis of food) and clothing (sportswear matching, the latest apparel). Thus,
the pursuit of beauty and design in Running Life are the tricks of sporting goods
manufacturers. Through advertising, Running Life aims to attract more women to the
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road running product market.
Figure 10. The 25th front cover of Number Do
The editor of Running Life (interviewee M1) claims that the “magazine itself does
not focus on a specific gender, but articles about women often appear because they
belong to the customer group that sporting goods manufacturers target”. Moreover,
Running Life chooses to report easy, basic, and interesting content, intended to cater to
those female readers who are beginners and not very familiar with running. In addition,
the three editors place reference to merchandise into readable content according to the
season. For example, merchandise will be mentioned via a meaningful story, or
personal interviews. In this way, road racing has become an extremely fashionable
sports event to which it is easy to become attached. Though the commercialization of
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road running might once have symbolized social status, it has been extended into a new
sports field, such that the possibility of women exploring the pleasurable activity of
running is increased (Whitson, 2002). It has also completely flipped the public’s
impression of road running, especially among women.
Apart from sports media, such as Running Life, fashion media is another focus of
sporting goods manufacturers. The manager of WongHe PR & Marketing (interviewee
RO1) has noted that “when there are road races, Nike will invite the editors of
magazines that women tend to read, such as Vogue, Elle and LoveGirl(愛女生), and
offer them free road running, pre-race training, or the opportunity to participate in
foreign road running events”. Nominally, this step aims to obtain service feedback, but
in fact it is designed for fashion media producers to record their half-marathon training,
and the way in which fashion magazine editors dress up. “Fashion”, therefore, has a
close connection with Nike female road running. In other words, sporting goods
manufacturers are trying to make a “sense of fashion” that relates to female road
running, including via endorsement by celebrities.
The influence of celebrities in the realm of social media has been another focus
of sporting goods manufacturers as they promote female road running. Social media
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tends to be more influential than traditional paper media, especially because of its
facilitation of instant interaction. Through collaboration with celebrities from different
occupations, Nike can use what it terms “friendly influencers”. Providing them with
free running gadgets, professional coaches and training lectures, they produce
related-contents and post on social media (mainly Facebook) in return. However, Nike has
been trying to keep some distance from these influencers.As the manager of WongHe
PR & Marketing (interviewee RO1) says, these influencers cannot count as Nike
endorsement because they are not athletes. On the other hand, she emphasizes that
Nike encourages friendly influencers to share their experiences social media, just not
forcefully. Nevertheless, we can see that Nike is trying its best to attract people from
all walks of life. Among its influencers, the female celebrity Gin Oy and her running
crew, the Amazing Crew have been most successful.
In the previous discourse analysis, we have seen that Gin Oy is a woman that has
risen from the ashes and adopted a new appearance. However, Gin Oy, a prominent
figure in Taiwan’s female road running scene, should give credit to Nike’s cultivation,
including its gift of running gadgets and training supplies, and its encouragement to
participate in international marathons. Nike’s help has allowed Gin Oy to accumulate
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enough personal capital to publish Taiwan’s first female road running book. Beyond
the running track, Gin Oy manages her own media presence via Facebook. By June
2016, she had reached 420,000 fans, thus strengthening her position as the leading
female runner in Taiwan. After her phenomenal success, Nike sponsored Gin Oy and
six of her friends to compose a road running team named the Amazing Crew. The
Amazing Crew’s members have their own identities, including a famous internet
celebrity, a shoes website editor, a leader of a bicycle group, a fashion designer, and a
prestigious sports anchor. The team is a combination of three men and four women
(Runnn, 2015).
According to my observation, since the Amazing Crew was founded in 2013,
most of its social media contents have related to Nike, including live-recorded Nike
road running events, running software, applications for recording running tracks, and
Nike training courses. The point is that all of the page’s gadgets and clothing feature
the Nike swoosh and are attempting to place Nike’s products. It is clear that after
shaping Gin Oy as the iconic figure, Nike has tried to utilize the diversity of the six
Amazing Crew members. Different careers and ages means that female runners can
find their own road running idol, while at the same time being stimulated to purchase
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products that they see on the fan page.
By contrast, Mizuno does not have such a comprehensive media communication
strategy as Nike and has not cultivated its own media influencers. Mizuno’s female
road race representative of the year is a female celebrity called Wong, Zi-Man(翁滋
蔓), and a female sports anchor called Chien, I-Chia(簡懿佳), who both have less
influence and reputation than Gin Oy. Mizuno’s exposure in sport magazines is
relatively little, the company instead focusing mainly on the Running Biji website,
newspapers, advertising content on social media, and the management of Mizuno
Lady’s Running via a fan page. The general manager of AimHit (interviewee, RO2)
thinks that the difference between the media marketing strategies of Mizuno and Nike
is related to the contrasting number of races they hold. Female road running is just one
of the races among various races that Mizuno holds. However, Nike only has one road
race a year and it focuses on women. Therefore, Nike needs to be more accurate when
communicating with its target customers. Apart from the difference between the
number of road running races held, there are differences in the media marketing
budgets of the sporting goods manufacturers, which can affect their media marketing
strategies. The manager of Delicacy Integrated Marketing (interviewee, RO4) has
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disclosed that because of budget constraints, Mizuno has put more effort into arranging
race themes and the design of finishing gifts. After evaluating the value of media
promotion, Mizuno has decided to focus on media which the target-customer can
access often. This is why it has concentrated on few media outlets.
Overall, Nike and Running Life are the main leaders of Taiwan’s female road
running scene, and responsible for turning the sport into a fashionable lifestyle. Female
road running and traditional media (magazines) still have a close connection with each
other. In the digital era, “celebrities” have created a sports media complex that is
different from before via social media. Sport is now more easily and more subtly
blended into our life, but the process has been difficult to detect. Relying on the high
penetration and high interactivity of social media, celebrities can be more persuasive
than the traditional media by using outlets they manage themselves.
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Chapter Five: Conclusions
The core question raised at the beginning of this thesis is why the phenomenon of
“for females only” road running has emerged in Taiwan since 2011. Examining the
media representation of female runners, and how other road running related actors have
intended to co-construct female road running, is the main aim of this research.
This study demonstrates that Taiwanese female road running publications
represent women with a bright, vivid image, thereby lauding a highly feminine body
aesthetic. Female runners are looking for a balance between masculinity and femininity,
through discipline one’s body to pursuit certain body curve. Despite the fact that gender
power relationships still conform to traditional gender characteristics, road running has
become a field for the self-empowerment of Taiwanese women.
Further, the fact that sporting goods manufacturers have chosen road running and
targeted women in particular is not a coincidence, but involves a series of
contextualized factors that the previous chapter has analyzed, including the
self-positioning of sporting goods manufacturers, marketing strategies that explore the new
market, the flexible use of new media, and new technology. At the same time, it is also
important to investigate the role of other actors by asking questions like, how do road
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running organizers understand female road running? What is their imagination of
female runners? What is the proportion of different sponsors in female road running?
What is the concern of media producers when they produce media content?
Accordingly, by examining media representation, market manipulation by the
sporting goods manufacturers, business powers, and the three actors’ mutual
interweaving, this research attempts to give some explanations for and criticisms of the
female road running culture that has recently emerged in Taiwan.