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adidas is set to reset its marketing and advertising strategy after admitting to over-investing in digital advertising in 2019 an effort to maximize on return on investments, or ROI for short.
Simon Peel, the brand’s global media director, mentioned how the brand with the Three Stripes wasn’t at the top of its game through multiple avenues. adidas didn’t have any econometrics nor did it do any brand tracking. In addition to that, adidas was persistent in efficiency over effectiveness which led to a loss of focus on the best interest of its brand.
“The reason for that is short-termism because we are trying to grow sales very quickly,” Peel said. “We had a problem that we were focusing on the wrong metrics, the short-term, because we have fiduciary responsibility to shareholders.”
Essentially, adidas was focusing to much of their energy and dollars towards digital conversion sales rather than brand building. While the digital world allows browsers to quickly put product into their shopping cart in the short-term that doesn’t necessarily make their brand more valuable in the long run. On the subject of brand building, it typically means more when a third-party is telling, backing or relaying the story than simply when the brand is touting itself on its own channels.
Be on the lookout for adidas to change it up in 2020.