Mobile Marketing at Adidas Essay Example

getting more expensive with website takeovers costing up to $500,000 per day. However, mobile advertising was cheaper and with statistics such as 70% of Europeans owned a cell phone it was obvious that this was the right fit for the future. Coca Cola’s campaign with codes to download free mobile content had great success and reached over 6 million people. This was a way for people to be engaged as well as promote Coca Cola’s products to their friends, family, and colleagues. They saw a huge market and future potential for mobile media spending by the target market they were concentrating on. They knew they had to jump in first to give them the edge against other competitors such as Nike and Reebok, especially in the U.S.

Having this information Adidas then proceeded to role out the test campaign with “Colours” in Sweden. This was a success and gave executives confidence that this was the right direction. Each launch thereafter, of the different application for the phone all exceeded their expectations drastically. They had so much in one of them that their technology could not handle it and had to shut down. Mobile marketing was the wave of the future and each time they tried something new that involved it they succeeded beyond anybodies expectations. People were moving to their phones like people moved computers.

They were spending money with them, and upgrading to have the most advanced and best they could get their hands on. This can be seen in how fast they were trying to get everyone on the 3G network so that phones could do almost as much as computers could at close to

the same speed. Adidas also recognized that other forms of marketing had become very cluttered and with this new direct mobile marketing it was right in front of the customer in their hand at all times. It was the future and Adidas needed to be the first one to realize this and take control of the opportunity.

3. What is the Brand in the Hand concept? What does this mean to Adidas and its branding efforts? The Brand in Hand concept, initiated by Nick Drake, the Global Media manager for the Global media group, was a marketing strategy based around mobile phones. Since the adaption of 3G, wireless information services were quickly becoming the primary communication and entertainment medium for younger consumers. Through Brand in Hand concept, Adidas would begin advertising to people via their mobile devices through text, wallpaper, ringtones, and mobile media games.

In 2003 youth spending on mobile media was high in the Asian pacific and Europe and was projected to grow in terms of total spending and % of leisure spending in the future. As an example, Adidas introduced a mobile media package called Match Centre that would allow sports enthusiasts to follow the scores of their favorite games on their mobile devices through an application, without having to access the internet.

The implications of this new marketing initiative would be that Adidas could reach their target market in a new and exciting way that is considered to be more personal for the consumer. This gives Adidas the opportunity to become a more relateable lifestyle brand, where people have the Adidas logo on the background of their phones and have an Adidas sponsored ringtone

that they would hear on a daily basis. The opened opportunity for Adidas, but means that the company would need to be careful how they advertised to the customer, not wanting to overwhelm them or give the consumer a sense of intrusion into their daily lives. The goal would be to provide a benefit to the consumer, coupled with the Adidas logo, as was accomplished through Match Centre.

4. What were the objectives of the Missy Elliott (ME) campaign in the United States, and why did Adidas choose to centre the campaign based on Elliott? Do you think this campaign will be successful in the United States and why? The objective of the Missy Elliott campaign was to attract a younger, hipper, more urban consumer. Nike had dominated this market in the past through it basketball dominance with Michael Jordan. The objectives of the ME campaign were to show the product line, create consumer demand, drive traffic to retail outlets, help consumers locate the products, grow the existing database of Missy Elliott fans and capture SMS data, alert fans to product line activity such as Missy Elliott press updates and appearances, and to enable users to download exclusive Respect M.E. mobile content onto their handsets.

Adidas chose to focus around Missy Elliott because she was the best selling female hip-hop artist of all time. Adidas had a history of popularity in the hip-hop category in the 1980s with Run DMC. She is also popular among a younger audience who would be more prone to use the mobile marketing campaign. Missy Elliott is also a unique artist that has a different style, so the campaign would definitely add

something different and with more flair.

We think at the time the campaign came out, the campaign would be successful. The campaign came out in 2004 where what you had on your cellphone (wallpaper, ringtone, etc.) really defined you. The more unique your phone the “cooler” you would be. The campaign played to the 15-25 year old market and Missy Elliott as popular at this time. We think it was a risky move by Adidas later into their fiscal year with limited funds, but the benefits and exclusivity Missy Elliott fans get through this campaign are fantastic.

5. How important a role should MMC play in Adidas’ overall brand communications strategy? Is MMC just a novel approach to marketing communications and a marketing fad (is it merely communicating the same message in a new format?), and to what extent should it play a part of overall marketing communications strategy at Adidas or at other firms competing in different industries in the future? MMC should actually play an important role in the company’s overall brand communications, since its target market is young consumers ages 12-24 who are spending increasingly more time on mobile and gaming devices (sometimes both in the same device). Consumers are projected to spend the same amount of time on these devices as the on Internet by 2020 (Exhibit 1). With the projected increases through 2020, mobile and gaming devices don’t appear to be a trend that is fading, and neither should mobile marketing.

Youth are always looking to be cooler and engage in the next “cool” trend, and although mobile devices will increasingly become more sophisticated in their functionality, the mobile phone doesn’t seem to

be disappearing any time soon and adidas should strongly consider marketing in this arena given the successes it has had with its previous campaigns in Europe and the U.S. Although it is still important to use some traditional media like television advertising, MMC is not as cluttered with messages from other brands and is more personal and interactive, creating a stronger brand awareness and more importantly, a strong tie between consumer and brand. We believe that ring tones and wallpapers are becoming less of a focus for youth in the mobile phone arena as new technologies point us towards apps and Internet capabilities.

Perhaps investing in an app for phones that hosted a sophisticated soccer game where players could play against their friends or strangers via the Internet and as their winnings increased, they could unlock special skills using adidas wear (shoes, jerseys, etc...) and special discounts. Then the user could bring his discount accompanied with a bar code on his phone to an adidas retail outlet to purchase branded items and the store associate could scan his code right off the phone. This encourages interaction with the brand, exposure to new items, and deals to drive in-store purchases.