Micky Pant's strategy: An innovative tool in Reebok advertising policy

Résumé du document

Vice-President of global marketing at Reebok, Micky Pant, implemented a renewal of Reebok branding strategy, especially by developing new media concepts. He was the coordinator of several marketing campaigns, such as the tremendous "Terry Tate, Office linebacker" TV ads, presented in 2003 during Super Bowl breaks. During Micky Pant's tenure as vice president, the athletic footwear company developed novel ways of promoting its brand. The famous Terry Tate TV spot is now considered as one of the first innovative advertisement campaigns using TV has a "hook" and the Internet as a propagation tool. Indeed, at this time, "Viral Marketing" and "Buzz" were only theory concepts, and were not as well understood as today. The annual event Super Bowl is considered to be a premier sport event in the United States. It is also known to have the largest audience on TV of the year. As a consequence, TV channels sell advertising slots at very expensive prices, and advertising campaigns have the reputation of being particularly innovative and funny. People often take a lot of pleasure from these ads. In 2003, Reebok bought a 60 seconds advertising time during the break and broadcasted its campaign "Terry Tate : office linebacker" for first time. This TV spot shows a documentary-like video, occurring in an open-space office. The video is focused on the company's manager who is arguing about his new motivation strategy. This strategy is based on hiring a football linebacker, who loves to tackle and offend people who do not respect office life (does not make coffee when the cup is empty, attend personal phone calls, or play computer game during working time). This spot appears to be particularly surprising, as it is humorous, such as confronting the boring office life and extremely funny sports culture. After viewing this spot on TV, millions of American people rushed to their PC and downloaded Terry Tate's clips. 20 million files downloaded on the first week-end, and on Monday Reebok servers broadcasted several terabits of data in a few seconds.

Extraits

[...] We're enlisting Beyond Interactive to place a bunch of ads, and all of that does draw traffic. And the Internet is still a good value for the money. Look at the price of a Super Bowl ad. Give that money to an Internet guy and see how much you can get. Also, full-motion video works very well now. It's almost as good as watching something on TV. You can get the full impact. The only thing is that people on the Web are very discerning. [...]

[...] According to me, the principle of this media strategy is not to have a message. Or in other words, we could say that the message is: live differently, be your own leader. More than memorable, this message is hugely supported, as it is a major component of Gen-X's social evolution Did it generate a sufficient level of positive attitude towards the brand? Positive attitude towards the brand was huge after Terry Tate's ‘enrollment'. However, those positive attitudes appear not to have a clear impact on the economical growth of the company. [...]

[...] The strategy isn't revolutionary. Designers frequently outfit actresses in gowns and jewels for red-carpet events like the Oscars, banking on the celebrities to bring cachet to their names. But until recently, sneaker companies from Adidas-Salomon AG to Nike Inc. relied solely on athletes for endorsements. The companies didn't see themselves as fashion brands. Their advertising focused on performance, their credibility won or lost on the basketball court, and their cachet earned by endorsements from superstar athletes like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. [...]

[...] And traffic increased seven times in our online store. We started moving merchandise like Terry Tate bobble head dolls and shirts. He became a phenomenon. For example, the Super Bowl spot played on January 29th. On the 31st, Terry and I closed the New York Stock Exchange. He went on the Today Show with Matt Lauer; he was on ESPN, CNN, MSNBC, Toast of the Town, etc. There have also been all kinds of Terry Tate spoofs. On Kazaa, you can find 10 variations of those films. [...]

[...] First of all, because Reebok Basket is widely appreciated by this generation, and because its shoes are bound to sports, travel, and high activity. Highly colored shoes are also the representation of counterculture, opposed to the conformal wearing of the 1960s generation. Gen-X is not afraid to be judged according to its shoes. To finish with, Reebok made Internet its major communicative tool and uses TV as a ‘hook' permitting to ‘drag' people from their computer screens. Part three Reebok's successes through buzz 1. Is this innovative tool successful for Reebok? a. [...]