The Story Of Adidas And Nike

ADI, the largest sporting goods manufacturer in Europe, is the world's second largest sports brand.

Reebok, the second largest sporting goods manufacturer in the United States, is next to Nike and ADI's third world fashion brand.

A few days ago, the two formally joined together - in August 3rd, Adidas announced that it would buy Reebok in the same industry at a price of US $3 billion 800 million.

The main intention of this strong alliance is to challenge their most important competitor, Nike, to challenge the dominance of the US Nike industry.

It will take time to test how the sports brand will develop in the future. However, there are many historical and marketing strategies for Nike and Adi, the two most popular sports brands in the world.

ADI: on the Olympic stage, in 1928, when Adi Dassler, the founder of the company, began to sew the first pair of sneakers for the athletes of the Amsterdam Olympic Games, Adidas's history was closely related to the Olympic Games - at least three times more than the official supplier qualification of the Olympic Games. At the Athens Olympic Games, Adidas supplied 26 items to all 28 sports.

In fact, it is the international sports competition of the Olympic Games that provides the best platform for Adidas to display the quality of products. It is precisely this marketing feature that has made Adidas.

ADI DAS and his successors have only one belief: to provide the best products for athletes, so that they can achieve better results.

And the international competition venue like the Olympic Games is undoubtedly the best base for testing the quality of products.

In the world, Adidas's marketing strategy mainly adopts strategies closely related to world-class sports events, as well as signing endorsement agreements with the gold medal team and gold medal athletes to promote the strategy of brand pulling.

In fact, for sporting goods companies, the Olympic Games, world cup, NBA, gold medalists and so on are influential and reputable endorsements are the best form of publicity.

Although Adidas has a large number of famous athletes as spokesmen, the focus of its sponsorship activities is more focused on large global sports competitions, sports organizations and teams, such as Olympic Games, European Football Championships and World Cup football matches.

This strategy enables Adidas to connect itself with the most exciting events.

This is different from the emphasis on sponsoring individual athletes. The latter hopes more to the success of athletes and the exemplary performance both inside and outside the stadium.

In addition to the world series, Adidas also sponsors national teams and regional teams from all over the world.

It supports national football teams such as Germany, Spain and France, football clubs such as the AC Milan and the Real Madrid, the New York Yankees and the San Francisco 49 football team.

The team is the center and spiritual pursuit of many of its fans. This provides a unique opportunity for the sponsors to establish contacts with their customers and promote their brand.

Relying on this set of marketing models, Adidas can be outspoken in 1960s and 70s.

But in 70s, Adidas did not realize that the movement of civilians had become a trend, or focused on professional sports shoes.

Due to the failure of sales expectations and the underestimation of market competition, Adidas's position was challenged and finally replaced by Nike in the late 70s.

Nike: Pyramid image promotion strategy Nike originated in 1962, first created by Phil Knight, then named "blue ribbon sports", and officially changed its name to Nike in 1970s.

In 1980, it accounted for about 50% of the US market share, which initially exceeded Adidas's position in the US sports shoe industry.

Since then, Nike has been implementing aggressive marketing activities, signing top athletes and creating the slogan "JustDoIt".

In the most part of the 80~90 era in twentieth Century, professional athletes were worshipped as heroes. Therefore, Nike invested a lot of money to invite successful and attractive athletes to endorse products and adopt the Pyramid image promotion strategy.

That is to say, the top athletes from the spire to the national team, and then to the NBA League provincial team, until the packaging to ordinary youth basketball activities, including the four elements of the entire sporting goods market.

The number of top athletes is the least, but it has a strong radiation.

Nike is not the only one who uses athletes to advertise products, but Nike is the most successful.

Nike has a saying that the secret of running is to create high quality shoes for athletes and let them walk in front of fashion. Other people in the market will follow suit.

In 1984, Nike signed a 5 year contract with Jordan, giving Jordan the conditions including the stock donated to Nike, and the unprecedented courtesy - the use of Jordan's name on Nike sneakers.

Jordan's total value is as high as 1 million dollars a year.

This price is 5 times the price of Adidas or CONVERSE.

Both companies believe that Jordan is merely a product spokesperson, but he did not expect him to become the core of the market strategy and the whole athletic shoes and sportswear production line.

Fortune magazine also published an eye catching report that it was a big mistake to sign such a contract on the financial condition of Nike at that time.

It turned out that the contract was a "win win" deal, which owes much to Jordan, who is beyond many people's expectations.

Jordan's influence on Nike is enormous.

Jordan embodies vitality, prestige, superb athletics level and inspiring sportsmanship, so that Nike can get out of the circle of running shoes and make a big fuss about basketball which has just started in the United States.

Almost overnight, even without sales, Nike has become the leading product of high-end basketball shoes.

In addition, Nike pioneered the ambush marketing strategy.

According to advertising experts, the effectiveness of advertising does not depend on the amount of advertising spent. NIKE often advertise before and after the Olympics, which is mistaken for Olympic advertising.

In 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, NIKE did not become TOP partner.

But it rented a parking lot in the park of the Olympic Games, built a theme park, signed a star to go on show, and at the same time launched various activities, it turned out to be the biggest winner, and the American people thought it was the sponsor of the Olympic Games.