Promotional mix
The promotional mix used by the Adidas during their spring-summer 2008 “originals” campaign is that of sales promotions, advertising and publicity. In fact, advertising and publicity were the composing parts of the sale promotion campaign.
From an academic point of view, “a promotion is a form of corporate communication that uses various methods to reach a targeted audience with a certain message in order to achieve specific organizational objectives” (Paul, 3). Companies use promotions in order to “inform” and present to the general audience, the consuming public, the products they offer.
Promotional campaigns are designed also to attract consumer attention to products they did not concern themselves before (Paul 6). In a certain way, promotional campaigns are used to inform the interested ones and to “create” some interest toward the product for uninterested ones. Uninterested until the moment the campaign kicks off. As part of this promotional campaign we have advertising.
“Advertising is a non-personal form of promotion that is delivered through selected media outlets that, under most circumstances, require the marketer to pay for message placement. Advertising has long been viewed as a method of mass promotion in that a single message can reach a large number of people.” (Paul, 1).
Promotion analysis
The campaign we are speaking comprised a new set of online, print and TV related campaign elements for the 2008 collection of “ORIGINALS” clothing. It started with a fully “animated” ad, designed by “180 Amsterdam” graphic studio. The campaign shows a series of video advertisements of people from art, music and athletics (“New originals Campaign”, 1). It begins with the origins of creation of the company by its founder, Adi Dassler, and continues with the evolvement of the products category through the years and decades. All of this is in function of showing that Adidas does not offer only certain sportive goods and products but it is a way of conducting everyday life.
One of the scopes of the promotional campaigns is to communicate kernel messages to the general audience (Paul 13). In this case the message would be that Adidas is not just a sporting goods company, it is a lifestyle company. It is a way of conducting your own life. The scope of this type of communication is to influence consumer behavior. As explained in task two, this is what brand companies do.
After the first video came advertisements addressed to particular sectors of the public. Famous public sport figures were used as models. But the messages were not the same. They were slightly different for particular sectors of the public. To the youth, adolescents, young sport athletes and figures were presented and products with vivid colors and fashionable, young-style, design were introduced.
Competitive advantage
The important thing to mention here is that Adidas started the campaign just before the summer Olympics. This was not a coincidence. The Olympics is an activity that, per se, promotes sport-related lifestyle. And in fact, Adidas is promoting a type of lifestyle. It is using the general worldwide moment in his favor.
During the summer Olympics the attention of the world is attracted more to sport issues due to the involvement of virtually all of the nations of the globe in it. In this case, the Olympics campaign is used as an advantage by Adidas. If the Olympic Games want to promote a sportive lifestyle, Adidas is practically offering one. And that is its advantage over the competition.
References
Adidas Group. “At a glance” the story of adidas group. 2008.
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Kiley, D. Reebok and Adidas: A good fit. 2004.
Wasserman, A. Reebok sales slump hurts Adidas, New plan to be announced. 2006.
BusinessWeek. 2002 global brands scoreboard. 2002.
Christ, Paul. Principles of Marketing. 2008.
New Originals Campaign. Anonymous article from www.oceanofknowledge.com. 2008. Web.