Puma, Germany: Vows To Carry Out Guerrilla Marketing In The End

The establishment of a new attitude towards life in the 80s and 90s of last century, Puma once sold and sold far behind Nike, Reebok and Adidas and other sports apparel giants.

At that time, Puma was regarded as an outdated brand. Department stores put Puma sneakers on cheap containers, and Puma went to the brink of bankruptcy in 1993.

Most analysts and observers believe that Jochen Zeitz as CEO and chairman of the board is an important turning point for Puma.

Prior to that, Puma's marketing plan was in line with the rules. Apart from that little puma Logo, there was no difference between the brand and Nike and Adidas. Dealers also put the same products on different sales terminals.

As soon as Zeitz took office, he pointed out: "individuality is the key to our survival. We want to be the most popular sports lifestyle brand that consumers want. Otherwise, we can not compete with giants like Nike."

The core of Puma's market segmentation is to firmly grasp the "Early-Adopter".

According to the marketing theory, all consumers can be divided into "Innovator", "Early-Adopter", "Majority" (Early Majority), "late herd" (Late Majority) and "lagging behind" (Lag g ARD) according to their acceptance time and acceptability of new products and technologies.

Among them, the first attempt "accounts for about 13.5% of the total. They are generally" opinion leaders "in a certain market or field, which can help to recommend the brand or product to" herd "and" laggard ".

Botn, director of brand management, said Puma did not differentiate the brand's product line according to the price, but considered what products were designed for the first attempt, which were designed for the herd, and the products designed for the first attempt were more advanced and fashionable.

The same is true of product distribution channels. According to the characteristics of different product lines, Puma makes avant-garde design products appear in some fashion shops, while those mainstream products are sold in sportswear stores such as Foot Locker.

Then, Puma, in collaboration with supermodel and yoga trainer Christie Turlington, launched a series of Nuala designed specifically for women's Yoga.

With the efforts of Puma, Madonna, who is now fashionable, can always see Puma's casual shoes, but Louis Weeden's luxury handbag is in his hands.

Low price and high return marketing Jochen Zeitz just took over Puma when using guerrilla marketing tactics was helpless.

In 1993, Puma suffered a loss of 32 million US dollars. Under tremendous pressure, Zeitz could only take measures such as layoffs and reduced marketing costs.

But then, the surprising investment return made Zeitz determined to carry out guerrilla marketing.

Unlike the big investments made by competitors in mass advertising and publicity, Puma limited its limited marketing funds to cheap and creative guerrilla marketing activities.

In 2002, the advertising expenses of Puma in the US were only 3 million 900 thousand yuan, less than a fraction of the competitors such as Nike and Reebok.

In the fall of 2002, Puma sponsored a sports shoe design competition sponsored by avant-garde designers, called Thrift.

Designers have to use raw materials such as shirts, pants, ties and purses to design sports shoes. The company named the final 510 pairs of "soul sports shoes".

Limited production is sought after by many collectors. The price of each pair of shoes has been raised to $250, and some works have been collected by the London Museum of art.

During the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, other sports brands seized the rare opportunity to get the official sponsorship power and sign contracts with the big stars.

Puma has avoided such a swarming and unique approach, but has signed sponsorship contracts with African teams such as Jamaica and Tunisia.

On the one hand, such an African team performs well and has a high appearance rate, and the sponsorship fee is much lower than that of the big teams. On the other hand, Zeitz said that the character of Jamaica and Tunisia athletes is very suitable for the Puma brand line because sports are not only blood, sweat and tears, but also endless fun.

During the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, Puma also organized a public relations campaign called Shudoh.

Puma invited Masaharu Morimoto, a famous Japanese chef, to design a sushi roll for the world cup. During the world cup, it was supplied in major Japanese restaurants in major cities around the world, including New York, London and Sydney. It was also called "food for the World Cup".

If fans order this dish in restaurants, they will be accompanied by Puma Log o chopsticks, Japanese sake cups and napkins, and sushi production competitions.

Jochen Zeitz said: "(Americans) in fact, the interest in football matches is not very large. This public relations campaign with" Japanese way of life "as the main demand point makes the audience feel fresh, and makes our activities compare with other brands, which are different from others.

Cross border joint promotion of brand influence as early as 1999, Puma put forward the concept of "Cros s over", and launched the high-end casual shoes with the German high-end clothing brand Jil Sander.

After that, Puma's new concept has a large group of followers. Adidas cooperates with Japanese brand Yohji Yamamoto, Reebok and Chanel cooperation, sports brand and fashion brand alliance has become the trend.

In 2003, Puma took the first step to establish a product and brand cooperation relationship with BMW brand Mini, a loyal supporter of guerrilla marketing tactics.

Puma has specially designed a series of "Mini-Motion" sports shoes based on BMW Mini, which are sold worldwide.

BMW designs the seat of the new Mini model with Puma's sports shoes, such as air mesh technology, and prints the Puma's famous puma Logo on the outside of Mini.

Jochen Zeitz describes the brand cross-border cooperation as two brands' dating or marriage. "We can not only look at the size of an enterprise, but also see whether the two sides are compatible with each other".

Rinat Aruh, a lifestyle Development Manager at BMW Mini, said: "our two brands have so much in common. We hit it off.

We are all "anti traditional brands". They all believe in guerrilla marketing. They spend a lot of energy on how brands can be spread among consumers.

We find our customers through the attitude of life. It is a relaxed, pleasant and interesting job to work out marketing plans with marketers of Puma.