Marketing Communications Programme of Adidas - Essay Example

?Marketing communications programme of Adidas Marketing Communications, or MarCom for short, is the process of communicating certain information and details, which the organization wants to give away to its stakeholders particularly its customers. As Shimp (2008) states, marketing communications is just one element of the marketing mix, under which companies use various communication methods, so that they will be able to break through the clutter, and reach the targeted customer base, with the aid of interesting and effective persuasive messages. The success or even the failure of a MarCom programme carried out by an organization can be evaluated and judged using a communication audit. According to Fill (2009, p.912), “communications audit is a process that can help assess whether an organisation is communicating with its consumers and other stakeholders in an effective and meaningful way.” Typically, a communication process involves the sender (or marketing team), who encodes the message in particular way, then sends through a channel of transmission, which will be received by the intended recipient or customers through his/her own decoding process. The role of communication audit is to find whether the intended person is decoding the message in the manner, in which the messages were designed when encoded. When this communication audit is done on a real organization like Adidas, it gives interesting perspectives or results of their MarCom strategies. Adidas is the Germany based sports equipment and apparel manufacturing company, and along with Reebok, Taylor Made and Rockport constitutes the Adidas Group. Adidas is the second-biggest sportswear manufacturer in the world in terms of revenue and reach, following Nike and when it comes to Europe, it is the largest manufacturer. (freebase.com). Headquartered at Herzogenaurach, Germany, Adidas is known for producing and selling high quality products with the aid of effective marketing strategies to a wide range of customers throughout the world. Although, it also provides its products to its brand endorsers and sponsored teams, its main focus is on the key stakeholder of customers. Adidas has a set of stakeholders and according to its website they are Employees at the Adidas Shareholders, Board of Directors Business partners including suppliers, retailers, distributors, service providers, etc. Employees in their suppliers' factories Customers, which include professional sports people and importantly consumer (adidas-group.com). Among these stakeholders, customer segment are the key because, although other stakeholders will also be communicated regarding the company’s operations, the customers will be mainly communicated through various marketing campaigns for their products. The customer segment of Adidas constitutes people, who want to buy sportswear and equipments for their sports activities and also as part of their lifestyle activities. As Borowski (2011, p.7) states, Adidas could focus on the “middle and upper-class athletics, single and family-households with lifestyle and brand loyalty, whose income allows buying those goods.” When the age aspect is focused, Adidas’ target segment will be mainly in the age group of 14 to 30, however as Hall, Jones and Raffo (2007) states age will not be always a factor, because even people in their middle-ages will buy Adidas products as part of their lifestyle activities. This perspective was validated by Keegan (2009) as well, who stated, “Adidas still enjoys high brand loyalty among older Europeans”. Thus, the target customer base or key stakeholders of Adidas is slightly broad, and so Adidas has been communicating with all these customer segments through different MarCom strategies. To initiate these customer segment specific marketing campaigns, Adidas in the late 1990’s categorized its brand into three main groups, called Adidas Performance, Adidas Originals and Adidas Style Essentials, with each group constituting a range of products exhibiting a specific focus. This categorization of products was a key communication strategy, followed by Adidas both in its retail as well online sales, because it gave the different customers segments a guide on where to look for their products. Apart from this modification in their operations, Adidas with certain objectives launched various MarCom strategies to communicate different perspectives to its broad customer base, with sizable strategies being aptly decoded by the customers, while others were not. One of the key objectives of Adidas was to earn itself a global brand name. That is, after Adidas made a comeback of sorts in 1990s, after going through tough times for many decades, Adidas had the objective to become a strong global brand, rivalling its competitor Nike. As Keegan (2009) stated, unlike its American rivals, Adidas until late 1990’s does not had a global ad campaign. At the turn of the 21st century only, Adidas understood the need to launch a global strategy. As then Adidas’ global marketing chief Erich Stamminger stated in 2001, “We want to mean more to more people. We want to expand our customer base and gain deeper market penetration in our existing markets.” (Keegan and Green 2005, p.469). In that direction, in early 2002, Adidas dropped London based advertising agency Leagas Delany and roped in Los Angeles based TBWA as well as Amsterdam (Netherlands) based 180, to give it a global appeal. Stamminger pointed out the rationale for this decision by stating, “By appointing one global agency network, we are continuing our strategy of strengthening the Adidas brand worldwide.” (Keegan 2005, p.469). To fulfil that objective only, Adidas with the aid of TBWA and 180 came up with its successful ad campaign, Impossible is Nothing featuring globally known sportspersons like David Beckham as well as unconventional sportspersons like female boxer Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali. This campaign was carried out through various communication mediums or tools from TVs, posters, billboards, prints and even internet. In early 2004, Adidas took over the Yahoo portal to promote this campaign, by incorporating a video ad featuring Laila and her father. This Yahoo takeover by Adidas far exceeded expectations, with around 5 million people downloading this video, “making it one of the most successful advertisements placed on Yahoo” (Ferrell and Hartline 2008, p.607). The message, this ad campaign wanted to send to the customers is, anything can be achieved if the athletes and even common people tap their inner strength. With strength and self-belief, they can surmount any challenges, including self-doubts. “Impossible is Nothing speaks to every person who, whatever his age or status, sees sport as a personal challenge, a passion, a competition against oneself” (Dru 2007, p.214). Thus this campaign was launched not only to entice the customers globally towards the Adidas brand but also to inspire them. This message seems to have been aptly decoded by the intended customer and this can be seen from the customers’ reaction in Germany. One of the theoretical perspectives that need to be followed by Multinational Companies when doing global marketing campaign is adaptation. As Kenneth (2007) states a key approach to global marketing is adaptation, with marketing strategies needing to be designed for and adapted to individual countries, and in line with this perspective, Adidas came up with a Germany centric campaigns. In 2006, just prior to the Football World Cup in Germany, Adidas featured advertising posters in many key locations in Berlin showing the then German Football captain Michael Ballack standing in an heroic position, with the slogan 'Impossible is nothing' prominently placed. Germany was not a favourite to win the World Cup, and so this campaign by Adidas was carried out to send a message to the Germans that nothing is impossible and to make them belief in their team. According to Berger (2008, p.11), the customers seem to have successfully decoded that message because that poster and the campaign as a whole “caused a tremendous euphoria within the German population and the belief in being stronger than the competitors”. This was also theoretically validated by Doole and Lowe (2004) who stated when the receiver (in this case German people), reacts exactly the same way, the sender expected, when he/she created the campaign, then the campaign can be tagged as a successful one. However, this campaign was unsuccessful in one particular case, and Adidas understanding that came up with alternate strategies. Former Tennis star, Anna Kournikova was Adidas Brand ambassador in mid-2000s. When this campaign was launched, her career was at crossroads, and so she retired from the WTA tour. As Smart (2005, p.183) stated Kournikova represented the very “antithesis of the campaign” and so Adidas sensing that quietly distanced itself from her. This MarCom related campaign also positively impacted another stakeholder of employees. That is, till the advent of that campaign, Adidas employees were not confident enough to take on the world leader, Nike and were content to play the second fiddle. However, when the campaign became successful and garnered positive responses, the employees also got inspired. As Stamminger said, “For each and every member of the Adidas family, Impossible Is Nothing, this attitude, this philosophy has become part of our daily lives and our language.” (Dru 2004, p.214).That is, the campaign inspired and urged the employees as well, to believe and have confidence in the brand. For example, salespeople in the United States felt more confident taking on Nike, and the shoe developers came up with new models filled with revolutionary technologies, etc. (Dru 2004). This is line with the theoretical perspective that employees could be motivated by external factors like the external success of the organizations’ marketing campaigns. (Gschwandtner 2006). Thus, it is clear that this Impossible Is Nothing campaign made Adidas a global brand, and importantly the message was aptly decoded by not only the customers but also by the employees in an indirect way. The other MarCom objective, Adidas had particularly in relation to Nike is to have a differential marketing strategy. Nike garnered optimum attention by coming up with a passion filled contemporary campaign in the form of Just Do it campaign. Adidas with the intention of differentiating from that campaign came up with two distinct campaigns, the Street Credibility and the Retro. Under the Street Credibility Campaign, Adidas wanted to send the message to the customers that its trainers not only have professional applications, but can also be used in the streets for various lifestyle activities. As Hall Jones and Raffo (2007, p.166) stated, “Adidas attempted to regain market share by its own marketing campaign, with the objective of differentiating its product,” and in that direction promoted its trainers as having 'street credibility". This campaign was aptly decoded, with many customers buying those shoes for multipurpose activities. Again with the objective of differentiation, Adidas from 2000 launched a “number of product ranges with a 'retro' 1970s look in an attempt to increase sales and win market share.” (Hall, Jones and Raffo 2007, p.166). The Retro campaign particularly the athletics-wear ads featured celebrities like David Beckham, Missy Elliot, etc, with the theme of bold celebration, to be precise, a “house party everyone is invited to” (Farina 2009). Adidas felt that their retro look will entice not only their older customer segment as well as the young people. It worked expectedly as younger segment identified with the celebration theme particularly the house party, with the “music of DJ Pilooski `s remix of “Beggin`” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons” adding to the impact. (Farina 2009). Caribbean sprinter Kim Collins' win at the 100 mts final of the 2003 World Athletic Championship in a pair of retro-styled Adidas track and field shoes gave further leverage to Adidas' Retro campaign. (Keegan 2005). Another Adidas campaign which sent the customer particular message, and which received apt response from them was its TV ads during the launch of Adidas 1 in 2005. Adidas 1 is a computerized running sneaker, which was marketed as the “world's first intelligent shoe” (McCarthy 2005). With the objective of reaching a younger customer segment in a more effective manner, Adidas along with film director Spike Jonze came up with an ad, that had heightened music and special effects. Adidas did that because it wanted do away “dialogue-heavy TV ads of the past, with actors emoting hackneyed lines of dialogue”, instead wanted to feature heavy pop music, so it can easily connect with the younger generation. (McCarthy 2005). That happened exactly, with the younger generation, particularly in the age group of 18-24 aptly decoding it. This was validated by the Ad Track, USA TODAY's weekly consumer poll. In that poll, a healthy 27% of consumers thought that the spot was "very effective," which was higher than the Ad Track survey average of 21%, and importantly, it scored highest with the 18-to-24-year-old consumers, as “eye-popping 44%” of them stated that the spot is "very effective." (McCarthy 2005). This in line with the theoretical perspective that music will be incorporated into advertisements in the form of imposed music to enhance the emotional or technological qualities of the product, and thereby positively influence the consumers' buying behaviour. (Wahl 2007). From this communication audit of Adidas’ MarCom strategies; it is clear that Adidas came up with many innovative and interesting advertising campaigns to fulfil certain objectives. These campaigns tried to send particular messages to the intended customer, and importantly, messages in most of those campaigns were correctly decoded by the customers. This way they are able to enhance their brand image, and are trying to ensure that their MarCom investments are yielding adequate returns. References adidas-group.com, Our Stakeholders, viewed on December 14, 2011 http://www.adidas-group.com/en/sustainability/stakeholder/ our_stakeholders/default.aspx Berger, C 2008, Strategic Sports Marketing – The Impact of Sport Advertising Upon Consumers: Adidas - A Case Study, GRIN Verlag. Borowski, A 2011, Adidas Marketing Strategy - An Overview, GRIN Verlag Clow, KE 2007, Integrated Advertising Promotion , and Marketing Communication, Pearson Education. Doole, I and Lowe, R 2004, International marketing strategy: analysis, development and implementation, Thomson Dru, JM 2007, How disruption brought order: the story of a winning strategy in the world of advertising, Palgrave Macmillan Farina, ZZ 2009, Adidas Retro Groove With David Beckham, viewed on December 14, 2011 http://dalje.com/en-lifestyle/video--adidas-retro-groove-with-david-beckham/220463 Ferrell, OC and Hartline, MD 2008, Marketing Strategy, Cengage Learning Fill, C 2009, Marketing Communications, Interactivity, Communities and Context, FTPrentice Hall freebase.com, Adidas, viewed on December 14, 2011 http://www.freebase.com/view/en/adidas Gschwandtner, G 2006, The Essential Sales Management Handbook: Your Secret Weapon to Success, McGraw-Hill Professional Hall, D, Jones, R and Raffo, C 2007, Business Studies, Pearson Education. McCarthy, M 2005, Ad Track: Adidas ad takes a different path — and it works, viewed on December 14, 2011 http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/adtrack/2005-06-05-track-adidas_x.htm Keegan, WJ 2009, Global Marketing, Pearson Education Keegan, WJ and Green, MC 2005, Global marketing, Pearson/Prentice Hall Shimp, T A 2008, Integrated Marketing Communication in Advertising and Promotion, Cengage Learning Smart, B 2005, The sport star: modern sport and the culture economy of sporting celebrity, SAGE. Wahl, TN, The effects of music amplitude and consumers' sex on subjective perceptions of wait time, ProQuest Read More