I Will What I Want: Misty Copeland

Read the campaign story

Under Armour introduced I Will What I Want on 31 July 2014 with Misty Copeland at the centre of its principal film. The brand’s announcement positioned the wider campaign around women’s athletic experience and identified Droga5 as its creative partner. Copeland was then an American Ballet Theatre soloist. Her film launched online before a scheduled US television debut on 4 August, making this a specific opening chapter rather than the whole subsequent platform.

Contemporary reporting describes a voiceover rejecting an applicant’s suitability for ballet while Copeland’s physical performance supplies a very different impression. That report also contains an essential qualification: Copeland said she had not received the exact letter heard in the advertisement. Its language condensed resistance she had experienced. The letter is therefore a dramatic device grounded in her account, not an archival document, and should not be retold as one.

Editorial reading: The film makes judgment and evidence collide. The audience hears a verdict about what a person supposedly cannot do while seeing controlled, demanding movement. This is more specific than a general statement of empowerment because the contradiction happens within the viewing experience. The performance carries the argument, allowing the closing line to summarise a conclusion rather than manufacture one.

The choice of ballet also broadens the meaning of athletic performance without abandoning physical effort. A brand can reach an adjacent audience by finding an activity that shares its underlying values, rather than simply placing the same message in different media. The useful strategic question is which existing users have been omitted by the category’s habitual imagery, and what evidence would make their relevance unmistakable.

The ethical requirement is to distinguish a person’s lived experience from a marketer’s reconstruction. Dramatisation may communicate an emotional truth, but viewers should not be encouraged to repeat invented wording as documentary evidence. Participants need control over sensitive details and the chance to challenge a framing that reduces them to an obstacle story. Their present expertise can be more important than the rejection that introduces it.

A small team could profile a consenting practitioner whose skill answers a common misconception about the field. Begin with verified language, clearly mark any reconstruction and spend most of the piece showing the work. Test whether viewers revise the misconception and understand the product’s relevant role. Do not borrow results from later Gisele Bündchen executions or company-wide women’s sales: the opened sources verify this film’s launch and execution, not its isolated commercial contribution.

Let skill answer the claim

Choose an observable performance that directly challenges the misconception rather than relying on a motivational slogan.

Label reconstructed evidence

Keep composite dialogue and dramatised documents distinct from verbatim personal records.

Find an overlooked practitioner

Expand the category through people whose real activity shares the product’s values, with their approval of the portrayal.

A small test for another brief

Profile one consenting practitioner whose skill challenges a documented misconception.

Assess changes in the specific misconception, brand relevance and qualified interest separately.

Stop if the participant dislikes the framing or viewers mistake dramatized material for a genuine record.

• Verify the misconception and agree which personal details may be used.
• Film the relevant skill and identify any reconstructed dialogue clearly.
• Test the film with viewers unfamiliar with the practitioner.