Decathlon Canada — This Black Friday, Instead of Making Deals, We’re Making Time (Canada)
GOLD — 2026 Marketing Makes a World of Difference™ Awards
Decathlon turned Black Friday into an invitation to reclaim time for sport—using people’s own calendars to help make it happen.
Submitted by Cossette Media Canada
Winner’s Citation
For challenging the conventions of Black Friday by transforming a personal calendar into a new kind of media—and helping consumers turn an intention to exercise into time actually reserved for it.
How It Makes a World of Difference
Black Friday is designed around urgency: buy now, don’t miss out, get the deal before it’s gone.
For retailers, that creates an equally urgent race for attention. Yet Decathlon was entering that race with less than 1% share of voice in Canada’s highly competitive sports-retail category.
The brand saw another tension inside the day itself. While Black Friday has become a major shopping ritual, the barrage of offers can also create stress, anxiety and regret. Sport, meanwhile, offers almost the opposite experience: time away from the noise and an opportunity to improve physical and mental well-being.
So instead of simply offering another reason to shop, Decathlon asked people to do something else:
Make time for sport.
At the center of the campaign was a remarkably ordinary piece of technology—the digital calendar.
Consumers were encouraged to block a specific period for sport in their own calendar and add Decathlon as a guest. That triggered an invitation to a dedicated site, where participants could register and choose the sport for which they wanted to be equipped. Paid social, programmatic display, digital out-of-home, video and sports influencers amplified the invitation.
The Difference Marketing Made
Marketing didn’t simply remind people that exercise is good for them. It helped them make room for it.
That’s the cleverness of the idea.
A calendar is usually treated as a utility. Decathlon turned it into both a medium and a small behavioral intervention: instead of asking people merely to intend to exercise, the campaign asked them to reserve actual time for it.
And in one of retail’s most relentlessly commercial moments, the brand’s call to action wasn’t simply buy something.
It was do something.
That makes #MakeTimeForSports particularly interesting through the MMWD lens. Marketing remained entirely connected to Decathlon’s business and brand purpose, but the mechanism created something beyond an advertising exposure: time set aside for sport.
Results That Make a Difference
The approach produced strong commercial results. With a comparable budget to the previous year, Decathlon reported a 25% increase in revenue, a 56% increase in website visits and a 28% increase in branded searches.
But the more revealing measure may be who responded. 49% of participants who reserved time for sport were new to Decathlon, showing that the initiative attracted people beyond the brand’s existing customer base.
The idea also proved transferable: according to the entry, other Decathlon markets adopted the approach.
Perhaps that’s the most interesting inversion of all. On a day built around getting people to spend more, marketing created value by helping them set something aside instead: time.
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