Digitizing Sportswear

In this new age, digital marketing has become key for companies to stay afloat. Unfortunately, for many traditional companies, making the move to digital has been a slow crawl. One of the many markets that has seen digital marketing significantly impact sales is the sportswear market. Upon a review in 2012 by L2, a digital marketing company in NYC, with the assistance of the NYU Stern School of Business, the digital IQ rankings of 42 sportswear companies were released. 

According to D’Amico, “the report analyzed each company’s moves in mobile, social media, on their websites and within the digital marketing space (appearances in search rankings for example).” Six (6) companies were given the rank feeble, ten (10) were considered challenged, thirteen (13) were seen as average, eleven (11) were honored as gifted, while two (2) stood high above the rest as geniuses. Those two companies were Nike and Adidas. Let’s take a look at those companies to see what they have done to earn such high marks.

ADIDAS

An example of Adidas’ impressive digital marketing campaign made it into another Sporting the Goods post for their use of augmented reality in their advertisements. More information on that promotion can be found here. Another thing that Adidas did was turn a negative into a positive through social media. 

When one of their main endorsers, Derrick Rose, was out with a severe knee injury they used it to their advantage and created the YouTube web series “The Return of D. Rose.” Rather than having their top endorser disappear from the mainstream for a while, they were able to keep a weekly buzz and increase their fan base. (The first episode of the series can be seen below.) Adidas has also created miCoach to compete with the similar Nike product, where users can digitally track their performance and compete with their friends.

 Video provided by YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt6at8wCkbw

NIKE

Nike has moved away from the majority of their traditional media advertisements (TV, print, etc.) and begun using more social advertisement through social media sites. A big recent push for Nike came during the 2012 Olympics with their “find your greatness” campaign, which ran online before and after the games and later appeared on TV. Nike realized that we are in a time where everyone wants to be a star and this ad helped shift the focus from professional athletes to everyday athletes. They encouraged people to tweet their accomplishments and dreams with the hash tag #findyourgreatness. These ads had views in the millions and the twitter campaign created a measurable increase in the company’s followers. 

Something else that has helped Nike reach “genius” status is the creation of Nike Digital Sport. This division creates products such as the popular Nike ID, Nike +, and the new Fuel Band. Probably their most successful move to digitization, Nike +, is a technology that allows consumers to actively participate in the Nike experience by recording and tracking their exercise progress and receiving tips for improvement. This also allows Nike to track its consumers and the demographics for their different products. 

Briana Scales

*images provided by google images*