Post Graduate Programme in Management

Batch: PGP 2020-2022

Name of the Course : Promotion Strategy (Group 2)

Term : V

Title of Submission: Under Armour

Mani Bharathi P G 2001019

Nishanth Kanna S 2001024

Karthik Natarajan 2001080

Moovithakkumar V 2001088

Swati Agarwal 2001111

Harshith H S 2001115
Since Under Armour had no patentable technology they invested heavily in branding inorder to
differentiate themselves from the competition. Since it was a high involvement product with a
strong feelings component the company strived to instill an emotional connection with the
consumer. The idea was to influence the consumer in the initial part of the user journey. The
consumer follows the feel, learn, do order and most communication was around the feel section.
The only ad that displayed any kind of product salience was the “Click clack” and that was done
since the brand was entering a new market. No ad had a cognitive appeal. Most of the ads
involved celebrities to leverage brand associations. The imagery was consistent among most ad
campaigns.

Brand personality and associations:

Throughout their ads, Under Armour has been consistent in positioning itself as a brand with a
personality of Ruggedness: through a tough and outdoorsy image. Additionally, the elements of
hard-work, confidence and competence are portrayed with successful sports persons. This
creation of a brand personality helped Under Armour to get recognition with comparatively
lesser effort (cognitive ease). Also, a brand personality helps communicate the implied
functional benefits more effectively. These associations not only help the customers get what is
closer to their existing beliefs, but also helps the brand create brand equity in the earned media
channel, where it is the customers and general public, who spread the word about the brand.
This channel is perceived to have higher credibility, which leads to an increase in the brand
equity, creating a virtuous cycle of favourable communication for the brand.

When such ads elicit strong emotions (through strong endorsers/influencers), customers
transfer these emotions to the product itself. Hence, an endorser eliciting positive associations
with a customer, makes him associate positively with the brand/product itself.

Since this is an affect dominated line of communication, the peripheral route of thinking tends to
be stronger. Also, customers who prefer to identify strongly with the influencers, would want to
imitate the influencer’s lifestyle/ use the products they use, etc. This occurs without much of a
cognitive thinking process (highly based on his/her beliefs).

Aaker’s Brand Personality model:

Here, the UA advertisements seem to exhibit a number of personalities like ruggedness,

competence, excitement.

Rugged here is shown for the product to give a feel like it’s built to last, ranging from sports
celebrity endorsements to everyday women, sweating it out in the gym signifying a tough and
outdoorsy image is portrayed in the advertisements that are perfectly in sync with their product
line. Here the brand is shown to be hard-working, authentic, strong, muscular, and high-quality.

Competence is portrayed with successful sports persons like Michael Phelps, Stephen Curry,
Lindsey Vonn and many more. This creation of a brand personality helped Under Armour to get
recognition with comparatively lesser effort (cognitive ease). UA wants to portray itself as a
brand whose ethos is reliability, responsibility, trustworthiness, intelligence, successfulness, and
confidence over the others in the competition.

UA being a brand that likes to target a demographic that is relatively younger it is important to
advertise as a brand of very high energy, high octane design and high on excitement especially
using celebrity endorsements. Especially campaigning with prototypes and taglines like “The
Future is Ours” gives a very daring, spirited, imaginative, cool, unique, contemporary impression
of the brand.

Also, a brand personality helps communicate the implied functional benefits more effectively.

Kellers CBBE Model:

Under Armour and the Women’s sports Apparel Market

Reasons to Enter

- High potential of growth

- Less developed market as compared to the overall sports apparel market
- Entry of Lulelemon Apparel into the women’s athletic apparel market

Mistakes made by Underarmour

- ‘Pink It and Shrink It’ i.e believing that they can use the products designed for men by
changing the colours and shrinking the size to fit women
- Losing focus on the women’s market, there was a greater focus on growth in the men’s
market

Learnings and Improvements in Promotions

- Designing new line of apparel for women by hiring creative women designers
- Hiring people specifically for branding for the women’s market business
- Working with Consulting firms to understand Women’s motivation to work out
 Value Proposition : Underarmour vs Nike
Value Proposition Under Armour
Promise of Value High Performance apparel with fabric
technology to improve training and
(as per how the performance in all weather
company originated conditions. This was followed by
and evolved) launch into shoes as well.
Target Group Young, upcoming athletes and
people interested in playing sports
Frame of Reference Sports Apparel Brand
Campaigns and ● We must protect this house
Taglines ● I will
● You are the sum of all your
training
● It’s what you do in the dark
that puts you in the light
●
Points of Underarmour is more like a person
Differentiation who is struggling to establish
themselves
The struggle is the focus
Underarmour focuses on how the
world is against the person and is
saying things against them which the
person has to fight and practice.
Nike
High performance shoes with
patented technology to take
fitness to people. Nike later
also came up with sports
apparel.
Young people who are
upcoming athletes, and
young people looking for
fitness
Sports Apparel Brand
Just Do It
● Find your Greatness
● First Step
● Join the Club
● Make yourself Athlete
Nike is more about winning
and being the best.
Being motivated to do it/ win
is the focus
Nike focuses on the
individuals finding motivation
within by finding their dream
and their greatness.
 Reason to Believe Athletes like Michael Phelps, Tom Athletes like Christiano
Brady and Madison Kocian Ronaldo, Allyson Felix and
others

Conclusion and Learnings from the Case

Some of the learnings from the case are as follows :

● UnderArmour developed as a company when there were major players like Nike and
Adidas
● The difference between various intellectual property right filings - Underarmour had
trademarks, while Nike had patents
● The brand personality that UA built through its campaigns focused on ruggedness and
competence
● UnderArmour had a much lower budget than Nike initially, but they could come up with
creative campaigns like - We Must Protect this House, The Future is Ours, and I Will
● The emotions elicited and the value offered was a lot more than just functional benefits.
● UnderArmour made mistakes in launching in Women’s Sports Apparel Market but learnt
from it’s mistakes and then launched successful campaigns