When Advertising Rules Change... the Reebok Case

Résumé du document

Since the mid eighties, companies have understood the importance of including marketing and communication in their strategies. Over the years and thanks to a globalization context, competition started to increase and firms had to justify their position on their respective markets. With the development of new technologies, firms had a lot of new opportunities available to them. It became easier to target consumers by seducing them in their daily life. Television, billboards, radio or newspapers were an amazing way to attract people and create new needs. Nowadays, customers have moved to other media thanks to the "virtual technologies" such as Internet, and their expectations have changed.
In order to identify their targets' new demand, firms have to adapt their strategy. On the highly competitive global sporting shoes/apparel market, the famous brand, Reebok, seems to have understood this problematic.
Founded by Joseph William Foster in 1890, Reebok was bought in 1958 by the American Paul Fireman. Since then, the brand has become a leading global designer, marketer and distributor of sports, fitness, and lifestyle products. In 2005, the Adidas group, and its main competitor Reebok, decided to merge in order to compete more efficiently with the leader, Nike.

Extraits

[...] (What are the advantages? According to this example we can say that Internet and viral marketing represent several advantages: - Thanks to social networks etc, the video can be broadcast all over the world - The network is available 24 hours a day - A cost free method : it's only expensive to create the spot, and the diffusion is free - People prefer trusting in what a friend says rather than in what a brand promises - This can be a great complement to the traditional medium/or to other marketing actions (What are the drawbacks? [...]

[...] It helps find out how many times they watch the video, visit the website or the online store, or subscribe to the brand newsletter. In the case of Reebok, the brand made its website more dynamic and increased its data base. Therefore to increase its sales, the brand should have planned to extend its advertising campaign. Is this type of communication capable of capturing the attention of Generation X consumers? Explain why or not? The members of Generation as we already said, are Internet users. [...]

[...] The viral marketing solution was thus born. Did Reebok succeed and how? The Viral Marketing How would you explain this technique to a lay audience? To what extent does it complement or replace traditional media? Internet represents a new way for companies to advertise. The brand image and recognition of Reebok was not enough good and the brand had to find a way to increase its visibility and readability among its target, the generation X. That is why Reebok decided to develop a viral marketing action. [...]

[...] At the end of the spot, the viewers were invited to go to the Reebok website in order to discover other Terry Tate adventures. This was a way to create a buzz, which involves arousing the viewers' curiosity, in order to make people (potential customers) talk about the brand and to create a relationship with them. If they like the commercial they might like the brand, thus paving the way for a real interaction. The main goal of this kind of action is to broadcast the information to a maximum number of internet users. [...]

[...] elements of everyday life (phone, email, addresses . ) and also distraction. The generation X spends a lot of time on social networks or on website such as “YouTube” or “dailymotion” where they can find any kind of videos at any time of the day. By creating a viral marketing action, Reebok found the best way to persuade this generation, by producing videos that speak to them. Reebok's first goal was, of course, to capture their attention, and its second goal was to increase its brand recognition and market shares. [...]