Adidas: Is Marketing Just As Simple As Showing Products?

Adidas has recently established a "X shaped" Pop-up concept space in Vitoria park to provide free fitness training experience for young women.

This move is only a small part of ADI's marketing strategy centered on the city.

The brand has adjusted its overall marketing strategy since last March, established a city centric marketing structure and locked 6 major global cities.

So what specific efforts have they made under the new marketing strategy, and what is the result?

Barry Moore, head of brand marketing at Adidas UK, said that the brand is moving toward more "reliability and spontaneity" of Barry.

Transformation, in order to re shape the brand image in the minds of young consumers.

Making use of Pop-up concept space to create social influence

The reason why Adidas built this X shaped concept space is to promote the brand new PureBoost X series running shoes for women consumers.

In addition, the space is also used as a venue for women to run and exercise during the winter of Vitoria Park (February 18-28).

"We know that the Vitoria park will close the jogging trail in winter months. Because the conditions are not allowed, the proportion of women taking part in jogging in this area will be greatly reduced," Moore said.

But that's when we seize the opportunity to play and create social influence.

We are no longer just showing products, we hope to really enhance the relationship between us and consumers.

"

We also know that Adidas adjusted its overall marketing strategy last year, which built a city centric marketing structure.

Under the new marketing strategy, they have locked 6 global cities, namely, Losangeles, New York, London, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo, focusing on these 6 cities to invest and set up experience activities centers.

This X shaped Pop-up concept space is part of its large investment project.

For example, in August last year, Adidas hosted an event called BaseBrixton, which invited amateur street soccer enthusiasts to participate in the launch of its new football boots ACE15 and X15.

In addition, Adidas recently held a music festival in Adidas's "Future House" concept space in East London's new art district, to promote its new NMD LDN series sneakers.

Moore said that the Pop-up concept space activities enabled Adidas to have more advantages than its competitors.

"Pop-up concept space is a marketing plan put forward after our deliberation. We hope to provide our fans with the value beyond the product itself, and hope to provide some other services to our customers.

What is not provided: deep interaction and social value, "he explained.

"After experiencing the activities of these three Pop-up conceptual spaces, we find that the impact of Adidas brand on consumers has been significantly improved, which can be seen from the amount of content you share actively and forwarded."

Building partnerships with young people

Adidas's fourth quarter sales increased by 15%, exceeding analysts' expectations, with sales reaching 4 billion 167 million euros, so the brand increased its marketing expenses by 31% in 2015.

Speaking of its performance, Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer said at the beginning of this month that this achievement was partly due to the cooperation agreement with rappers Kanye West and the good performance of Yeezy sneakers.

Adidas limited production in the production of Yeezy sports shoes, in order to create high demand and product reputation.

Moore said that the next brand will also work with British fashion designer Stella Mccartney (Stella McCartney) to design sneakers for the British national team.

If Adidas wants to connect with young consumers, cooperation with Stella Mccartney and West is very important for the brand.

"When we say Adidas is the brand of young people, Kanye is the representative, because he is a symbol of young people," Moore explained.

Judging by waiting at the Kanye foreign shoe store, we are in a very good position, "Moore added.

"We also know that the Adidas brand has been in existence for a long time, so we are looking for an opportunity to introduce our brand to young people.

If you look at our recent sponsorship agreements, we will know that they are young sponsors who are looking for new targets.

Dele Alli, the Tottenham hotdog, is currently the youngest player in the UK to discuss the heat. He has established a partnership with him to show our determination to do something new.

In addition, the rise of Adidas patent technology Boost has made the brand have certain advantages.

"Boost technology is a revolutionary cushioning material technology.

This technology is widely recognized by the public, giving our brand more advantage.

Given the success of the technology, what we need to do now is to package it from a marketing perspective, "Moore said.

Regain confidence

In the meantime, we also mentioned that in March last year, Adidas announced that its marketing expenditure would be around 6 global cities.

In addition, the brand also plans to gradually strengthen cooperation and innovation, thereby strengthening the attractiveness of the ADI brand and driving sales and profit growth.

ADI said that the strategy would help ADI establish a "new European marketing organization".

However, such strategies also bring negative comments.

"You have to question the logic behind this city centric strategy, because global distribution is one of the biggest reasons why Nike can beat Adidas," Tim Crow, chief executive of Synergy Sponsorship, questioned Crow.

But Moore stressed that Adidas's strategy and development path is no problem, and consumers have restored confidence in the brand.

Moore counterattacked: "we have been monitoring and testing our city centric strategy, judging from the two aspects of brand influence and net sales. It turns out that our brand is very hot now.

The strategy did not isolate any market, because we did well outside London.

Take our NMD products and sell them everywhere. "

Moore said Adidas's efforts to strengthen cooperation and innovation and become content creators are already setting up industry standards.

He concluded: "social platforms are crucial to the future of our brand.

We are now in an advantageous position by establishing relevant institutions and industry standards.

For example, we have set up several newsrooms in the head office to combine PR with digital and social media functions.

"Opinion leaders in

Brand communication will play an important role.

We will guide the public into our channels and let them create their own content. This is our priority.

We don't want to show people what we sell, we want to build this brand with them. "