Shots fired! Check out the strategy Nike has taken to get back at Reebok. This is not a new thing, huge corporations fight over segments of popular sports all the time to gain the upper hand. This is just the next frontier. The problem is Nike is late to join the party and now has to go on the offensive to get in front of the functional fitness audience. Click here for all the details of what Nike is doing, join us after the jump. Instead of focusing on the claim Nike issued to Reebok to beat there shoe, “Don’t ban our shoe, beat our shoe” we’re going to look at the Marketing Brands use either on the large scale with huge companies or small businesses.
Brief History of Nike: Nike has had a very interesting path to become the juggernaut it is today, but the major change happened is when the Air Jordans came onto the scene. Never had a shoe company had a star featured as the main reason to buy the shoe. That all changed when Michael Jordan came onto the scene. He was approached to make him a star of a new line of shoes and you know the rest. The company more than tripled there sales in the first few years with the shoe and has created a sneaker culture that now features rare Jordans going for hundreds if not thousands of dollars and even convention for sneaker heads (Sneaker heads is a term for collectors of rare and valuable shoes). Nike started that revolution and companies for the last three decades have tried to fight them head to head including Adidas and others.*
Adidas which owns Reebok has been making a killing the last few years looking away from major sports and infusing themselves into niche markets. In the last half decade they have aquired contracts with three fan bases that fuel a growth that few markets can match. (This isn’t even mentioning Adidas’ strangle hold on the international soccer scene). They have contracts with Spartan Races, CrossFit and newly acquired exclusive UFC apparel contract that started in full effect this week.
The contracts of these three are HUGE! That’s actually an understatement, they have picked three markets that are rapidly expanding fan base and targeting a group of people with a lot of disposable income. The research can be seen in many ways but all three of those sports and activities cost money to participate fully. Yes you can go out and run. You can do CrossFit in your garage. But what makes these activities so addictive is the community base of these activities. You want to bring people. You want to talk about you survived these events and workouts. And with the UFC contract they sealed, this gives them creditiablity with a company at the top of MMA. Casual sport fans don’t know that difference of other promotions but they know what MMA is when you reference UFC. Very similar to how if you talk about other functional fitness events, if you say it’s similar to CrossFit they automatically have a mental picture of what your talking about. Associating the entire sport with a certain brand.
Reebok has presented themselves as the pinnacle of sports performance apparel with a concise message and look. And this is even more so when gathering the companies at the highest level together and building a relationship and marketing agenda. With Nike missing out on all three growing lucrative fields they are grasping to get back in there and fight Reebok (owned by their nemesis Adidas) to serve the CrossFit community. Check out our next article to see there tactics and how they look to get back some of the market they have been neglacting. Interested in our discussion on Branding and Marketing? Sign Up for our newsletter, how CrossFit and others have become a master of Marketing, and speaking to their tribe? The articles delve into how you can do it with your fitness or wellness business. Sign Up Here.
* If you want to see more of the fight Reebok has had over the years watch the 30 for 30 documentary Sole Man.
