The digital marketing strategy and campaigns are behind much of the success of the number one sportswear manufacturer in Europe that it has enjoyed in recent years. Adidas focuses on leveraging the power of digital channels to create engaging and personalized experiences for its customers.
Changing consumer behaviors with the digital transformation leading people to make more online purchases also changes what Adidas focuses on. For instance, Adidas is investing more than € 1 billion in digitalization, including digital marketing, as part of its main growth strategy until 2025, “Own the Game”.
Let’s take a deep dive into the digital marketing strategy of Adidas:
Digitalization
The company spends the biggest part of its marketing budget on digital campaigns. Describing itself as a digital company, Adidas wants to be the world’s best sporting apparel brand. For the “best” means designing, building, and selling the most unique and comfortable sports goods in the world. In order to achieve this, they use digitalization as the key part of their marketing strategy to inform their target audience about their products. From commercials published on YouTube to engaging social media posts, Adidas utilizes various digital marketing channels to spread the word.
Relationship With Consumers
Adidas tries to interact with its customers and create personalized experiences. In other words, Adidas generates enthusiasm and excitement about sports on a personal level. The brand takes every touchpoint like mobile, social, and retail to interact with the consumers to provide an inspiring and personal experience. By taking insights from digital analysis, Adidas tries to be everywhere its consumers are.
Engine Digital collaborated with the Adidas Digital Future Team to meet the needs of Run Genie’s audience. The agency was tasked with defining an end-to-end customer experience that enables the sales team to guide the purchase decision through data visualization and connected hardware.
Here you can learn more about the project: Adidas: Using Data to Choose the Perfect Shoe
Open-Source Innovations and Collaborations
Adidas opens its doors and calls everyone including athletes, consumers, and partners to shape the future of sports and sports culture. They focus on bringing unique and useful products to the market altogether to meet the demands of today’s world and the common future. A great example of such creative collaborations is Adidas’s partnership with Parley for the Oceans producing three new UltraBoost models from ocean plastic waste.
Strategic Cities
Six cities (London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo) that shape the consumers’ perceptions, trends, and buying decisions have strategic importance in Adidas’s marketing strategy. Adidas spends more to market its products in these countries but it differentiates the products to be advertised for each country regarding the culture and the demands of the markets. For example, in Europe, they focus on selling soccer products, but the US is a key country for other subsidiaries like basketball and baseball.
Portfolio
The company is constantly revisiting its portfolio with a focus on the core brands: Adidas and Reebok. For instance, in 2018, Adidas repositioned Reebok for more profitability. For Reebok, they collaborate with influential women designers like Victoria Beckham and women who want to change the world like Ariana Grande and Gigi Hadid to make the brand more appealing to women.
Top Marketing Campaigns of Adidas
Marketing campaigns and advertisements of Adidas have always had an impact on the young generations. To have a more comprehensive understanding of Adidas’ marketing strategy, let’s see 3 memorable campaigns:
1. Impossible Is Nothing
Adidas has been using this motto since 2004 to highlight “the attitude Adidas shares with athletes around the world – the desire to push yourself further, to surpass limits, to break new ground.”
In 2022, the “Impossible is nothing” motto started to evolve into something bigger and more inclusive. This time, Adidas’ “Impossible is nothing” campaign features female athletes to call all women to action who “keep making the impossible possible every day.”
With this campaign telling female athletes’ stories who are making their own paths to success despite the gender apartheid, Adidas demonstrates that it can keep up with changing world of new generations demanding equality.
2. Take the Deal, Dare to Create
Launched in 2019, this campaign aims to push the boundaries of creativity and inspire people to make bold statements through their style and create their own paths. The “Take the deal, dare to create” campaign features a diverse group of athletes from different cultures who dare to challenge the norm and create their own style.
The message given with this campaign is that by taking the deal and being bold, you can create something one of a kind. Adidas implies that its sportswear is the product of creativity with the highest level of uniqueness and it is always ready to accompany you in your journey to find your true self and express it through what you wear.
3. When Football Is Everything, Impossible Is Nothing
Adidas’s power fuelled the FIFA World Cup 2022 excitement with a new version of its classic motto, “When football is everything, impossible is nothing.”
In this commercial, Adidas becomes a symbol of reunion and warm feelings. As Lucio Dalla Gasperinathe, the Director of Global Brand Communications of Adidas states that the focus on a family reunion in this campaign demonstrates that everyone gets together for the love of football; even the superstars reunite for such precious events. So, Adidas invokes a feeling of nostalgia in the audience and benefits from the power of digital to associate itself with the good old days.
Conclusion
Digital marketing plays an important role in Adidas’ digitalization process. It uses various channels and makes connections with its target audience to increase brand awareness. Adidas aims to grow more as it is not content with being the number one sportswear brand in Europe. It uses digital mediums to beat its biggest competitor, Nike in this game. If you are curious about what kind of campaigns Nike has been running, you can check out our blog post about Nike’s marketing strategy. And if you are looking for professionals to get ahead of your competitors, you can discover top sports marketing agencies and take action!
