Adidas case study

Name Akif Baqa

About the Company:

Adidas is on the move and always has been: It has had an adventurous history since it first grew
out of a family business in Herzogenaurach, Germany in the 1920s. With the hostile separation
of two brothers’ interests in the 1940s, nearly going bust in the 1980s and then executing two
rescue operations, first by sending production offshore to Asia and then by reinventing itself into
a design and marketing company, Adidas has riden the waves of change in the sports goods
sector both up and down. Alongside its own brands, it owned the Saloman ski and sportswear
brand for nearly a decade and now includes the Reebok, Taylormade Golf and Rockport brands
in its stable.

Marketing efforts & problems:

Adidas has been trying to be the market leader for years and always competitive with Nike but at start
that company wasn’t that much famous, the major turn of event for adidas was with Soccer footwear in
1995, that boosted the image of the adidas, then three years after adidas heavily did their promotions in
the U.S. market that highlighted their image further.
There Campaign of colors in 2002 at Sweden and living billboards in Japan made adidas one of the know
companies in the world. Adidas not only focused on print media and television but it heavily invested in
new media as well.

Another pilot involved a ring tone program in UK, with a small fee, which resulted in 6,000,000
downloads. Adidas envisioned its own broadband channel that could be accessed through an Adidas
icon. Users could then enter a virtual “Adidas World”. Adidas hired a software development firm to
create an arcade-style soccer game applet that could be downloaded for a fee of ￡1.99. and it did
server other campaigns with it. In early 2004, Adidas took over the Yahoo portal to promote “Impossible
is Nothing” campaign with famous boxing star, Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad Ali

Recently, to keep its brand in the public focus Adidas has also sponsored sportsmen and women for
many years. In 2008, 295 footballers, 64 rugby players, 71 tennis players, 24 basketball players and 8
golfers all benefited from its three stripe logo. One of the first prominent endorsers of Adidas
equipment was American running legend Jesse Owens, the gold medalist at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
As well as sponsoring the Beijing Olympics Adidas is also supporting the 2012 Olympic Games in London
in a deal worth around $200 million: in this sector such brand awareness is critical.

Going forward, Adidas is also embracing a number of niche sports and lifestyle activities fuelled by the
current trends in individualism, health and wellbeing with, for example, a new woman's Yoga range. As
it aims to take over world number 1 position in the sector from Nike, Adidas will be innovating
incessantly both within existing sports and outside the core.
The problem in the case study was that Adidas’s media campaign were designed to impact, involvement
and activate the consumers. it tried hard to keep the track on the advantages of the fad of Internet, cell
 Adidas case study

phone, 3G cellular telephony, Hip-pop etc, so that it can provide brand image beyond text messages, like
ring-tones, wallpaper, video games, new products, sports news, living sport match scores.

Solution:

Nike has been the strongest competitor to Adidas formally considered today the market leader in
sportswear; Second, Nike’s investments are way very high. So Head on competition would only affect
adidas.

What adidas can do it try for totally different strategies like celebrity endorsements, co-branding with
designers like D&G, as Motorola did for its razor, in fact adidas should follow the same strategy that
Motorola did with abhisheik bachan and make people connected with the shoes and not treat it as only
sports shoes. Nike has changed its image from sportswear to a necessity, Adidas should also think
different and try to change the traditional image and just not make it for sports only.

What adidas did was also very effective. i.e. the mobile media was very low cost, there was Inefficiency
in magazine ads and TV ads because of video recorder, Adidas can make use of “Viral Marketing” which
is very efficient, since mobile became a common and private stuff, so people keep online on its
marketing channel 24 hours/day and 7days/week and consumer is accessible any time.