Mobile Marketing: The Adidas Case Study
Posted by Category: Branding, Marketing, Research Review, Strategic Marketing.
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Mobile Marketing: The Adidas Case Study
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As Adidas cannot spend as much as Nike on marketing communications (Adidas’ annual advertising and promotional spending is $900 million only, compared with $1.4 billion for Nike), it has adopted more innovative, yet cost-effective, ways of reaching consumers, such as through mobile marketing.
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Between June and November 2004, some researchers held more than 20 hours of interviews with five senior managers at Adidas in Europe to discuss their efforts to incorporate new technologies and media (mobile marketing) within the company’s overall branding and marketing communications strategy.
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The Objectives were:
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1. Exploiting the Capabilities of Mobile Marketing:
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Taking advantage of mobile marketing’s unique capabilities can require substantial resources, but one solution is to partner with a content provider to develop a “personal mobile gateway,” somewhat similar to Apeoplee Computer Inc.’s iTunes, through which iPod users can purchase music recordings over the Web and manage those digital files in their personal libraries.
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2. Using Universal Appeals to Tap Into Global Markets:
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In its efforts to expand its brand across markets, MTV has managed to mix universal appeals with local tastes — a tactic that could be apeopleied to mobile marketing. The prospective purchaser of a luxury car, for example, might also be interested in an exotic vacation getaway, high-end sporting equipment and financial-investment vehicles.
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3. Addressing Privacy Concerns:
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Wireless communications are typically less secure than transmissions over fixed lines, and this raises a number of privacy concerns. In addition, the capability to connect with people continually throughout the day could result in intrusions into people’s private and public spaces.
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4. Aligning Value-Chain Partners:
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In mobile marketing, the value chain can consist of numerous stakeholders. For a company like Adidas, that chain might include back-end hardware supeopleiers (Nokia) and wireless carriers (Vodafone Group of the United Kingdom in Europe and New Jersey-based Verizon Wireless in the United States), specialized interactive and mobile communications firms, content providers (ESPN), traditional advertising agencies, and perhaps even partner brands (MTV). Who, for example, should manage strategy development and execution: the brand itself or one of its upstream value-chain partners?
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5. Integrating the Mobile Platform With Other Media:
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Companies should not treat the mobile platform as a stand-alone medium but rather as one component in an overall marketing strategy that must be integrated with others.
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6. Developing Mobile-Specific Metrics:
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One way to assess the effectiveness of a mobile-marketing campaign is to use traditional Internet measures, such as click-stream activity and the number of registrations, downloads and “pass-alongs.” But additional metrics that are specific to the mobile platform must be developed to fully determine the effectiveness and efficiency of mobile-marketing practices.
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