YANKEE FANS - CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
After more than a decade of dismal performance worldwide and a 1995 company relaunch by a group of international investors, the Germany-based athletic-footwear-and-apparel brand adidas (the official company name became adidas-Salomon AG after a 1997 merger with French sports-equipment maker Salomon) set its sights on rebuilding its share of the U.S. market. It dramatically raised its marketing profile in the United States and sought partnerships and licensing agreements. One such agreement, with the New York Yankees, caused controversy among other members of the Major League Baseball association. The partnership also resulted in a modestly scaled yet successful advertising campaign focusing on the nature of that baseball team’s fans. ‘‘Yankee Fans’’ was developed by the San Francisco ad agency Leagas Delaney. It began during the 1997 baseball season and also ran during the following season, leveraging an estimated $1 million annual budget. The campaign was headlined by black-and-white TV and cinema spots as well as print and outdoor support, all of which revolved around five out-of-shape Yankee fans who painted letters on their bare chests so that collectively they spelled ‘‘YANKS.’’ The TV spots ran primarily in the New York area, but they also received national exposure during postseason broadcasts of Yankees games. The campaign was a hit with Yankee fans and New Yorkers. The five principal characters from the TV spots became local celebrities, and their fictional exploits were well received by advertising-industry critics. ‘‘Yankee Fans’’ won a Silver Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival and a silver and two bronze Clios, among other awards. Even though it was not designed to drive national adidas sales, the campaign corresponded with a period of sustained profit and market-share increases.

ADIDAS, PAL PARTNER IN PROGRAMS FOR KIDS
As adidas kicked off its ‘‘Impossible Is Nothing’’ advertising campaign, the company did not forget some of New York City’s youngest athletes and perhaps its future champions. The company announced plans to partner with the city’s Police Athletic League (PAL) to support boxing and basketball programs for boys and girls. Offering words of encouragement to kids and lending support for the proposed partnership, Laila Ali, who was featured in some of the ‘‘Impossible Is Nothing’’ ads with her father, boxing legend Muhammad Ali, said during an interview (at the program’s unveiling at the PAL center in Harlem), ‘‘A lot of people told me I shouldn’t go into boxing. If I had listened to them, I wouldn’t be where I am now. It’s very important for you to follow your dreams. You really can’t let anyone decide your future for you.’’

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Strong in the 1970s, adidas practically disappeared in the United States in the 1980s and early ‘90s. The German sports-shoe company, once the category leader with a 70 percent U.S. market share, slid completely out of the top four spots, down to a 2 percent share in 1993. Name recognition was low, and it was not viewed as a highquality product. Fortune magazine said that by 1993 the company was losing $100 million a year. During those same years Nike had become the dominant athletic-shoe manufacturer on the strength of its powerful, sustained marketing effort. At adidas’s low point an international group of investors led by Frenchman Robert Louis-Dreyfus bought the company and revamped it. It went public in November 1995.
Louis-Dreyfus fired the German senior management staff, closed down high-cost factories, and doubled spending on marketing (the marketing budget was set at 6 percent of the sales revenue in 1993). As a result, by 1997 sales had doubled, and Louis-Dreyfus kept the marketing budget at 12.5 percent of revenue. Ad agency Leagas Delaney, which previously had been creating a single commercial per year for adidas, was by 1997 making 40 spots and spending close to $20 million in the United States on advertising.
The resurgence took adidas past Fila to number three in the U.S. athletic-footwear-and-apparel market. Much of the rebound was built on a huge increase in adidas’s apparel business. To further enhance this growth, adidas bought French sports-equipment maker Salomon in September 1997. The move balanced the company’s geographic reach and provided better insulation against swings in fashion and sales downturns in one region or country. ‘‘The move gives [a]didas a leg up on Nike in one of its final frontiers for growth,’’ said Jeff Jensen of Advertising Age.
Another key marketing decision helped lead to the ‘‘Yankee Fans’’ campaign. After Nike signed a sponsorship agreement with the National Football League’s Dallas Cowboys, adidas looked for similar opportunities. The company won the Yankee sponsorship by acting quickly;
Nike and Reebok received calls from the Yankees about sponsorship, but adidas won by listening and moving fast, according to the Yankees’ vice president for business affairs, Derek Schiller. The baseball team also accepted partial payment of the sponsorship agreement in the purchase of adidas stock. ‘‘The Yankees and Adidas personify tradition and performance. Everyone knows who the Yankees are. Around the world. It’s a great relationship for both parties,’’ explained Sam Rothman, account manager at Leagas Delaney. The sponsorship agreement, however, immediately generated controversy. Major League Baseball (MLB) maintained that the deal violated the league’s licensing policy. The Yankees and adidas responded by suing all of the other MLB teams as well as some leaders of the organization, claiming that these parties had disrupted a legitimate business partnership.

TARGET MARKET
In the late 1990s the major competitors in the athleticshoe market received the bulk of their sales from young males, many of whom bought multiple (often five to six) pairs of athletic shoes each year. Adidas’s overall core market was the 14- to 18-year-old elite athlete, but the ‘‘Yankee Fans’’ campaign strictly targeted Yankee baseball fans. For the Yankee sponsorship to be of the most value to adidas, the company needed to build a strong association with the club in the minds of its fans. Leagas Delaney said that it was not an intensely researched campaign with focus groups, statistics, or scientific analysis. Instead the agency built the spots informally. Yankee fans were known to be passionate about their team. And the Yankee franchise had the proudest tradition in baseball, a long history, and more glory years than any other major U.S. sports team.
The agency chose the five actors who played the Yankee fans based on their abilities to project a New York attitude—an attitude that indicated, ‘‘Let’s get it done with full gusto.’’ Campaign success hinged on accurately portraying the male New York Yankee fan yet doing so in a humorous, exaggerated way.

COMPETITION
Since the 1980s Nike had dominated the athletic-footwear-and-apparel category. With its ubiquitous swoosh logo, Nike owned 47 percent of the 1997 U.S. athleticfootwear market. Nike’s hold on the category was so strong it redefined advertising for the entire category, emphasizing brash confidence, endorsers, the soft sell, and cinematic savvy. In 1997 Nike overhauled its longstanding, world-famous ‘‘Just Do It’’ campaign as a new campaign titled ‘‘I Can.’’
Even with such a dominant player, because of its growth the market continued to present a strong attraction to other companies. Athletic shoes enjoyed solid demand in the United States, and a steady economy and rapid rollouts of new styles that kept capturing new sales spurred their popularity. Apparel other than footwear was another way competitors increased their sales and profits. For several years Reebok, the number two competitor with 21 percent of the U.S. athletic-footwear market, ran ads similar to Nike’s (for example, the ‘‘Reebok Lets U.B.U.’’ campaign). Reebok tried to counter Nike’s staple of star athletes, such as basketball’s Michael Jordan, with its own superstars (Shaquille O’Neal). Reebok later dropped O’Neal and tried to exploit the anti-Nike sentiment.

YANKEE FANS LOVE ‘‘YANKEE FANS’’
Leagas Delaney account manager Sam Rothman paraphrased the sentiments of art director Peter Nicholson and copywriter Scott Wild, the creative minds behind the ‘‘Yankee Fans’’ campaign. ‘‘We shot the ‘Yankee Fans’ ads for 1998 at Yankee Stadium. They were playing the Braves. We kept the Yankee Fans around and had them do personal appearances. We had them sitting in the stands watching the game. When they were shown on the JumboTron (the in-stadium video screen) the crowd went absolutely nuts. We showed the commercials. Then we took the guys and moved them to another part of the stadium. I’ve never seen a crowd go so crazy. People were jumping up and down, yelling, screaming, running over to them, taking their pictures, and asking for autographs. These guys, like Mr. ‘S’ signs his autograph, ‘Mr. S.’ That is what we wanted—acceptance from the fans. That was the best proof of how we accomplished our goal.’’

MARKETING STRATEGY
Nike’s dominance was so impressive that other product categories, such as soft drinks and telephone companies, also adopted its ad style. Eventually market research found young consumers tiring of athlete-as-God and win-at-all-costs approaches. Ads with highly paid, ‘‘perfect-body’’ endorsers and so-called ‘‘full-of-itself’’ attitude began to suffer. After years of seeing the Nike swoosh logo everywhere, some people in focus groups began referring to it as a ‘‘swooshtika.’’ ‘‘The underlying cocky, prescriptive, hipper-than-thou tone of the ads started to get on people’s nerves, as did the company’s tendency to deify athletes,’’ wrote Warren Berger in Advertising Age.
In this environment the ‘‘Yankee Fans’’ campaign gave people a low-key approach. Whereas Nike portrayed the athlete as hero and hard worker, and Reebok fought back with its own sports-celebrity endorsers, adidas focused on the fan. (This focus, however, was at least partly a result of adidas’s and the Yankees’ ongoing lawsuit against the rest of MLB: adidas was not allowed to use Yankees players in the campaign’s spots until the lawsuit was settled.) The competition showed the athlete’s muscle, but the adidas spots showed the fans’ potbellies and lack of muscle tone. The spots came across as real and down to earth. Another twist was having one of the world’s greatest sports franchises represented not by its stable of stars but by the people who paid to see those stars play.
Among the campaign’s four initial black-and-white TV/cinema spots, two in particular resonated with New Yorkers and Yankee fans as well as with ad-industry critics. ‘‘Abandoned Mr. S’’ opened with a dance beat and the image of a shirtless and bald man waiting nervously on a busy street corner. Painted on his chest was an ‘‘S.’’ Viewers pondered this man’s purpose and felt his discomfort until a taxicab pulled up. His relief was palpable: inside were four other men, each shirtless and with a letter painted on his not-so-muscular chest. Together the men spelled out ‘‘YANKS.’’ In the spot ‘‘Spelling Trouble’’ the five guys were again in a cab and were again shirtless, each with a letter painted on his chest. The driver sized them up and said, ‘‘Ansky? What the hell is Ansky?’’ The guys, realizing that they were not sitting in the correct order, started moving around in the backseat, creating a tangle of limbs and torsos before settling into position, spelling out ‘‘YANKS.’’ Mr. ‘‘N’’ ended the spot by yelling ‘‘Yanks!’’ at the top of his lungs. Each commercial closed with the tagline ‘‘Only in New York.’’ When in May 1998 the adidas/Yankees lawsuit against the other MLB teams was settled, the campaign began featuring Yankees players in addition to the ‘‘ANSKY guys,’’ as the Yankee fans in the spots had become known. For instance, the Yankees’ pitching coach was shown advising pitcher David Cone to rest his arm. The ANSKY guys accordingly began doing everything in their power to help him rest his arm: they answered his cell phone for him, fed him, and even helped him relieve himself in the men’s room. The campaign’s annual budget was estimated to be $1 million. The spots initially ran on the large video screen at Yankee Stadium as well as on TV during local sports programming and in movie theaters in the New York area. During postseason games involving the Yankees the spots were aired nationally. Print and outdoor ads using photographs of the ANSKY guys were also employed.
Some criticized the advertisements for not showing or talking about the product, but adidas wanted all emphasis on the audience. ‘‘It’s not like [a]didas is a new brand that has burst out and needs to create a new identity,’’ said Courtney Buechert, managing director of Leagas Delaney. ‘‘Adidas’s identity was and is and has been for 70 years about love for a sport and a mission to create products to help athletes perform better.’’

OUTCOME
The ‘‘Yankee Fans’’ campaign ran during an upswing for the company. Financially the year 1997 was the best ever for adidas, especially in the United States, where its growth rates outpaced Nike’s and Reebok’s. Worldwide sales were $3.72 billion in 1997, up 23 percent over 1996. North American sales were up 66 percent, increasing the company’s market share in the world’s most important sporting-goods market to more than 6 percent. In 1998 adidas also made huge strides in its attempt to catch Reebok and Nike; that year it doubled its share of the U.S. market to 12.6 percent.
The campaign’s target market seemed to love the spots. The five guys became celebrities, attracting crowds, autograph hounds (each ANSKY guy signed with his individual letter), and applause whenever they made a public appearance. The campaign also won many industry awards, including a Silver Lion at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France, one silver and two bronze Clio Awards, and a 1998 American Advertising Federation Award. It was also a finalist at the One Show and earned a ‘‘Best Spot of 1997’’ recognition from Adweek. The campaign’s profile was heightened considerably by the Yankees’ championship season of 1998, during the course of which the spots ran on national television. The ANSKY guys were featured prominently in the victory parade following the Yankees’ World Series victory.
Leagas Delaney’s success with the ‘‘Yankee Fans’’ campaign landed it the New York Yankees’ own advertising duties in 1999. The agency was also entrusted with the job of crafting adidas’s first umbrella branding initiative in the United States since 1993. That campaign, the high-profile ‘‘Long Live Sport,’’ was released in 1999. The partnership between adidas and the New York Yankees was renewed in 2006, guaranteeing that adidas would remain the ‘‘Official Athletic Apparel and Footwear Company of the New York Yankees’’ at least through 2013.

IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING - CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
Over the years adidas-Salomon AG has maintained an international reputation as a premier maker of sporting goods and athletic footwear. It has hired some of the sporting world’s top athletes as spokespersons for its products, and the company has also owned a sponsorship deal with the New York Yankees. Despite its high profile in the industry, however, the company remained the alsoran athletic footwear company in the United States, behind Nike, Reebok, and New Balance. In addition, in 2003 the company reported that its total sales in the United States had dropped 16 percent in the first nine months of that year. Further confounding adidas, which sponsored the 2004 Olympic Summer Games, was the loss of its sponsorship rights to the 2008 Olympics to its competitor Nike.
To gain an edge over the competition and to reenergize its business in the United States, in 2004 adidas-Salomon AG introduced a $50 million brand-marketing campaign—the largest ever undertaken by the company—that included television, print, and Internet ads. Themed ‘‘Impossible Is Nothing,’’ the yearlong global campaign was created for adidas by 180/TBWA, a partnership between 180, an agency based in Amsterdam, and the San Francisco agency TBWA/Chiat/Day. It kicked off with television spots featuring digitally altered footage of boxing legend Muhammad Ali jogging with some of the top athletes of the 1990s and 2000s, such as soccer star David Beckham. Athletes featured in subsequent ads included Ali’s daughter Laila, also a boxer, NBA greats Tracy McGrady and Tim Duncan, and tennis champion Justine Henin-Hardenne. The campaign clearly resonated with consumers and earned praise and official recognition from the advertising industry. After it began, the company reported that U.S. sales were up 11 percent compared with the same period the previous year.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Adidas was founded in the late 1920s in Germany by brothers Adi and Rudi Dassler. According to the company, Adi Dassler ‘‘had passion for every sport and a passion to make equipment to help every athlete perform better.’’ In 1928 adidas began equipping Olympic athletes, and it continued to do so over the years. Runner Jesse Owens wore the company’s track shoes during his Olympic competition in 1936, and it was reported that at the 1972 Olympics some 80 percent of the goldmedal-winning athletes wore adidas shoes. Adi Dassler’s innovations included inventing screw-in cleats for soccer shoes and introducing a lightweight sprint spike. When the brothers ended their partnership in the late 1940s, Adi kept the business going and continued to develop sporting equipment intended to enhance the performance of athletes at all levels.
By the 1990s, however, the company was struggling. This was due in part to mismanagement by Adi’s son Horst, who, after Adi died, had taken control of adidas in 1985. Horst’s death in 1987 led to the sale of the company in 1989 to French businessman Bernard Tapie, who filed for bankruptcy soon after purchasing adidas. By 1992 the company’s U.S. market share had taken a nosedive, dropping to 1.9 percent from a high of 70 percent 20 years earlier.
In 1992 another French businessman, Robert Louis-Dreyfus, took the helm at adidas, and by the late 1990s the company was on an upward swing, increasing its business by 74 percent in the United States. But in 2003 adidas, with a 10 percent market share, still lagged behind Nike in sales, and its North American business was again on a downward slide, dropping 16 percent in the first nine months of that year. Herbert Hainer, who had succeeded Louis-Dreyfus as adidas-Salomon president and CEO in 2001, told Advertising Age that the drop in U.S. sales in 2003 was not a one-year problem but rather had been ongoing for several years. Hainer blamed the problem on the fact that adidas had been ‘‘slow to adapt to a shift in demand from many of our customers.’’
In an effort to revitalize its U.S. business, the company refocused its marketing to attract younger consumers and shifted its global marketing functions to the company’s American headquarters in Portland, Oregon. Adidas also implemented a new, more cohesive approach to its international advertising by hiring American agency TBWA/Chiat/Day as its ‘‘global agency network.’’ For the development of the upcoming campaign, TBWA was partnered with 180, an Amsterdam-based shop that had been creating successful ads for adidas since 1998.

TARGET MARKET
The ‘‘Impossible Is Nothing’’ campaign was driven by adidas’s efforts to shift its marketing focus to reach its target audience, 12- to 24-year-old consumers involved in sports. Based on statistics showing that men between the ages of 18 and 34 spent more time online than watching television, adidas also shifted some of its marketing to the Internet. Tara Moss, Internet business developer for adidas America, explained during an interview with Advertising Age, ‘‘We were trying to reach that teen audience that is dedicated to sports. Their apparel and footwear is really necessary to them in their daily lives.’’
Whether the new campaign would actually appeal to its target audience was questioned by some. In an interview with the Oregonian, Paul Swangard, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center at the University of Oregon, said that adidas needed to make changes in its marketing to be competitive with such companies as Nike and Reebok, who were using highprofile athletes, including NBA stars LeBron James and Yao Ming, respectively, to promote their products. ‘‘The challenge here is whether young teenagers, who are really the hot market for shoes and apparel, resonate with [Muhammad] Ali,’’ he said. ‘‘Many of these kids may never have seen him compete in their lifetime.’’

COMPETITION
With a 37 percent market share in the United States, Nike had a firm hold on its position as the number one sporting goods company. In 2004 it introduced one of its most extensive advertising pushes, a campaign that asked the question ‘‘What If?’’ Like the adidas ads that featured star athletes, Nike’s commercials used a roster of top athletic performers. But rather than showing the athletes doing what they did best, the Nike ads depicted athletes participating in sports other than their specialty. For instance, tennis star Serena Williams played beach volleyball, and Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong sparred in a boxing ring. As Nancy Monsarrat, Nike’s director of U.S. advertising, explained to the Washington Times, ‘‘What if Lance Armstrong was given a pair of boxing gloves instead of a bike as a child? Our belief is that a passionate athlete’s drive to win would translate into success in any sport.’’
Reebok International Ltd., the number two maker of athletic shoes in the United States, had employed numerous memorable marketing campaigns, from ‘‘Because Life Is Not a Spectator Sport’’ in the mid-1980s to ‘‘Life Is Short, Play Hard’’ in 1991. In 2003 it introduced its ‘‘Outperform’’ campaign. According to the company, this campaign allowed Reebok ‘‘to educate consumers about our heritage in performance. The first commercial went all the way back to 1895 and the beginnings of the J.W. Foster Company, working our way up to the present day.’’ Reebok increased its international marketing in 2004, starting a major ad campaign in China, where the market for sneakers was $500 million and Reebok’s sales accounted for just $40 million of that. The company’s international presence also was expanded in Europe, with French soccer star Nicolas Anelka serving as spokesman. In Latin America and the United States the brand partnered with pop singer Shakira.

MARKETING STRATEGY
The adidas ‘‘Impossible Is Nothing’’ campaign, created by 180/TBWA, was designed first to reach American consumers and to improve the company’s market share in the United States. Adidas stressed that the campaign was aimed at a global market and that ads would eventually include athletic stars from a variety of sports and regions. ‘‘Impossible Is Nothing’’ was launched in February 2004 with television, print, and Internet advertising. ‘‘Wallscapes’’—huge ads on the sides of buildings—were installed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, and Portland. The first television spot featured American boxing icon Muhammad Ali as a young man setting off on one of his legendary long runs; the footage was digitally altered to show him running alongside members of a new generation of athletes, including soccer great David Beckham and NBA star Tracy McGrady, all dressed in adidas merchandise. Meanwhile, Ali’s daughter Hannah narrated, ‘‘Some people listen to themselves, rather than listen to what others say . . . they remind us that once you set out on a path, even though critics may doubt you, it’s okay to believe there is no ‘can’t,’ ‘won’t,’ or ‘impossible.’ They remind us it’s okay to believe impossible is nothing.’’ Another TV ad employed digital effects to depict a young Muhammad Ali sparring with his daughter Laila. In a voice-over Laila dismissed the idea that women should not box, saying, ‘‘Impossible isn’t a fact; it’s an opinion.’’
In addition to print ads and TV spots, the campaign, described by the company as a ‘‘fully integrated communication campaign,’’ also included ads and promotions on the adidas website as part of an effort to reach consumers, especially teens, all over the world. For a limited time the ‘‘Laila’’ TV spot was made available on the Yahoo!, MSN, and ESPN home pages. The online aspect of the campaign also featured 20 elite athletes, each telling his or her personal ‘‘Impossible Is Nothing’’ story. Consumers who logged onto the site were encouraged to share their own stories of overcoming the impossible to succeed. The best stories were awarded prizes. Additional television commercials showed past and present Olympic stars interacting with each other. One ad had sprinter Kim Collins on the track encountering the 1936 gold-medal-winner JesseOwens. Another depicted gymnast Nastia Liukin retracing the moves of the legendary Nadia Comaneci, who in 1976 became the first gymnast to complete a perfect-10 Olympic performance. The spot starringHaile Gebrselassie, known as one of the greatest runners of all time, was digitally altered to feature him running a 10,000-meter race in the Long Beach Memorial Stadium against nine competitors: all himself.

OUTCOME
As the ‘‘Impossible Is Nothing’’ campaign advanced, it became evident that it was resonating with consumers, and it earned accolades within the marketing arena. The campaign received a Silver EFFIE Award and won a Gold Lion Award at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France, and adidas was named the 2004 Marketer of the Year by Footwear News. Ad critics praised the campaign as well. Speaking specifically of the Boxing legend Muhammad Ali ® and daughter, Laila at the unveiling of a billboard featuring their image as part of the launch of Adidas’ campaign ‘‘Impossible is Nothing.’’ ª JEFF CHRISTENSEN/REUTERS/CORBIS.
commercials created for the U.S. market, Barbara Lippert of Adweek said that the campaign had been ‘‘incredibly successful.’’ She continued, ‘‘Those ads really capture the viewer’s imagination. They are beautifully executed and organic, effectively leveraging the brand’s image. Adidas has made a lot of noise. To come that far, that quickly, is just incredible.’’
The Internet component of the campaign was also successful in reaching the target audience. According to Moss, there was a 125 percent increase in the use of the search term ‘‘adidas’’ on the Yahoo! home page the day the ad featuring Ali and Laila appeared online. The highest number of search requests was from young men aged 13 to 17. Despite the campaign’s success, the NPD Group, an international market-research organization, listed adidas as the number four athletic-footwear brand in the United States—behind Nike, Reebok, and New Balance—the same position it had held in 2003. But based on dollar sales adidas made advances in 2004. According to the company, sales in 2004 were 11 percent higher than in 2003, pushing adidas closer to its proposed goal of doubling its 10 percent U.S. market share and closing the gap between itself and the top company, Nike.

RUNNERS. YEAH, WE’RE DIFFERENT - CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW
German sporting-goods company adidas-Salomon AG returned from near death in the mid-1990s with a new focus and global strategy. No longer content to allow competitors, especially the seemingly invincible Nike, to dominate the sporting-goods category, adidas launched a full-scale offensive designed to increase awareness of the brand, enhance its image, and elevate sales. The company moved production facilities to Asia to cut manufacturing costs, formed high-visibility alliances with sports organizations and athletes (including a sponsorship of the New York Yankees baseball team beginning in 1997), purchased the French company Salomon SA (a manufacturer of golf, ski, and bike equipment) in 1997, and pumped additional funds into its modest marketing budget. Hoping to increase the sales of its running accessories in the United States, adidas America, Inc., the U.S. headquarters for adidas, released a provocative campaign titled ‘‘Runners. Yeah, We’re Different.’’ The San Francisco office of advertising agency Leagas Delaney released the branding campaign with an estimated $1 million. To prove that the company understood the sport of running, the ‘‘Runners. Yeah, We’re Different’’ campaign, which began in 1998, targeted the serious runner, a relatively small and anonymous audience. With full-page and two-page ads in specialty magazines such as Runner’s World and Running Times and with some executions in the general-interest Sports Illustrated, the series of print ads celebrated the rather unusual but relatively common habits of dedicated runners, such as smearing Vaseline on the inner thighs and under the arms to prevent chafing. Sean Ehringer, Leagas Delaney’s creative director, explained, ‘‘[adidas] wanted to do a brand focus campaign that gave them some running credentials, and the way we decided to do that was to let runners know that we understand them . . . Runners have their own kind of weird way of doing things, so there’s a lot of things to talk about there.’’ The campaign ended in 2000.
According to the ad-industry publication Campaign, ‘‘Runners. Yeah, We’re Different’’ was the third most awarded series of print ads in the world for 2000. It helped adidas’s brand awareness in the United States reach record highs and was eventually expanded globally.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Adolf Dassler, known as Adi, began making athletic shoes in 1920 in Germany. His shoes made their first appearance in the Olympics in 1928, and in 1936 Jesse Owens won four Olympic gold medals running in Dassler’s track shoes. It was not until 1948 that Dassler founded the adidas company. The company was immensely successful, flourishing through the 1960s and 1970s. At the 1972 Olympic Games, noted Advertising Age, more than 80 percent of the gold-medal winners sported adidas shoes, and all of the Olympic officials were outfitted in uniforms designed by adidas. During that decade adidas gear could be found on most professional soccer players and on about 75 percent of professional basketball players. By 1978, the year of Dassler’s death, the adidas brand enjoyed a global recognition rate of about 95 percent.
Although it took years for adidas to build a reputation, the company’s commanding grip of the athleticgoods market deteriorated quickly. Not only did adidas miss some important athletic trends, such as the jogging craze of the late 1970s, but it also suffered from management problems. Dassler’s son Horst took control of the company in 1985, but he died just two years later, and adidas was sold in 1989 to French businessman Bernard Tapie, who soon declared bankruptcy during the course of a political scandal. By the time creditors approached French businessman Robert Louis-Dreyfus to take over the failing company in 1992, adidas’s share of the U.S. running-shoe market had fallen from a leading 70 percent share in the early 1970s to a dismal 1.9 percent, and the company was losing more than $100 million annually. Louis-Dreyfus knew nothing about the athletic-shoe business, but he had succeeded in turning around other failing companies, notably the London advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. After taking the helm at adidas in 1993, Louis-Dreyfus downsized the staff, moved production to Asia, and nearly doubled the marketing budget, from 6 percent of sales to 11 percent, to acknowledge the importance of advertising and image. Not only did adidas manage to elude death, but it also quickly and steadily began to increase sales and boost its reputation. Between 1992 and 1996 the company’s share of the $8 billion U.S. market increased from 2 percent to a small but more respectable 5 percent, and its revenues grew from $1.7 billion to $2.8 billion. In 1994 U.S. sales grew 62 percent, and a year later the company went public, the same year the rather unfit Louis-Dreyfus symbolically demonstrated his commitment to adidas by running in and completing the Boston Marathon. By the late 1990s the company’s U.S. sales were growing at an annual rate of nearly 50 percent, and adidas had no intention of slowing its pace. Steve Wynne, president of adidas America, told Fortune in 1997, ‘‘We have huge market share to gain in the United States . . . We’re very focused on what we need to do right now. In 1998, you’re going to see some very big improvements in our sales.’’

TARGET MARKET
Because adidas was a multisport company, it traditionally geared its goods and its advertising toward athletes. The company developed equipment for numerous sports, including wrestling, weight lifting, basketball, tennis, running, and soccer. Adidas’s target audience suddenly expanded in the 1990s, however, as renewed interest in the adidas brand, particularly in apparel, grew. Adidas was no longer associated solely with sports enthusiasts but with fashion-conscious youth, and the company embraced the market composed of 20- to 25-year-olds.
Despite its popularity with the youth market, adidas continued its marketing efforts in niche segments, directing advertising toward markets with specific athletic needs. For the ‘‘Runners. Yeah, We’re Different’’ campaign, adidas narrowed its audience to pinpoint the serious runner, a group frequently overlooked by the sports media despite the popularity of running. The lack of hype surrounding running could perhaps be attributed to the individuality and solitude of the sport. As Leagas Delaney’s Ehringer remarked, ‘‘Most people who run run silently on their own for their own reasons, and nobody even knows they exist.’’ Ehringer also emphasized the importance of running and said, ‘‘It is very much a unique and individual sport, but it’s a part of almost every athlete’s life at some point.’’ To lure runners, an extremely dedicated lot, adidas adopted an honest and direct approach. Ryan Erickson, a marketing executive at adidas’s rival Reebok International Ltd., explained the importance of credibility when advertising to runners. Erickson said in Footwear News, ‘‘Runners sniff out fake stuff in a heartbeat.’’

STARS AND STRIPES
Adidas’s comeback was boosted by the resurgent popularity in the early 1990s of adidas gear, adorned with the trademark three-stripes design and once again considered stylish after decades of being passe´. Celebrities such as Madonna, Cindy Crawford, and the band Luscious Jackson all appeared sporting adidas apparel.

COMPETITION
In the highly competitive U.S. athletic-footwear category, adidas America faced considerable competition from Nike and Reebok, the top two athletic-shoe manufacturers in the nation. Nike, which had dominated the field since the 1980s, when it wrested market share away from adidas during the running craze, boasted a 47 percent share of the U.S. athletic-footwear market in 1997, up from 45.2 percent in 1996, according to the industry newsletter Sporting Goods Intelligence. Reebok held a market share of 15.2 percent in 1997 and 16.5 percent in 1996. Although it was trailing Nike and Reebok considerably, adidas was becoming increasingly successful and profitable. Adidas’s share of the athletic-footwear market had grown from 5.4 percent in 1996 to 6.1 percent a year later, and in 1997 adidas snagged the number three position away from Fila Sport SpA, the U.S. arm of Fila Holding SpA. Also that year, adidas’s U.S. sales enjoyed a 66 percent increase over 1996. Helping adidas was the rejuvenation of the runningshoe category in the late 1990s. Running-shoe sales in the United States increased by 11 percent in 1997, and even smaller niche players, such as New Balance Athletic Shoe, Inc., and Saucony, Inc., were doing well. By 1996 adidas had managed to move up to the number two spot in the running category, and that year its running business increased an impressive 74 percent in the United States. Although adidas had a long way to go before it could hope to come within hitting range of Nike, the company still set its sights on taking market share away from Nike and Reebok. Adidas did not have the aggressive marketing budget of its chief rivals—adidas estimated that Nike’s media budget was 10 times greater than its own—but adidas believed that its quality products and careful marketing could generate enthusiasm among consumers. Fortunately for adidas, Nike hit a rough patch in the late 1990s that helped pave the way for adidas’s success. Although Nike still dominated the athletic-footwear category, its hold grew weaker. Its U.S. athleticfootwear sales dropped 18 percent in the third quarter that ended February 28, 1998. David Aaker, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, explained in Adweek, ‘‘The Nike brand has grown universal and ubiquitous to the point where it is losing its core appeal as a maverick.’’ In reaction, Nike expanded its famous ‘‘Just Do It’’ tagline and added the gentler ‘‘I Can’’ slogan in 1998, and its swoosh logo was toned down, no longer boldly emblazoned on every Nike product. Adidas, meanwhile, planned to take advantage of Nike’s slump to build its brand image. Ehringer noted, ‘‘Our job here in the U.S. specifically has been to replace the notion, ‘I’m buying this for what it isn’t’ to ‘I’m buying this for what it is.’ We’ve been trying to rebuild the brand in a sense and put its credentials out there and make sure people understand that it’s a multisport brand . . . so when fashions come and go, in the end, [adidas is] still a legitimate sports brand for sports.’’

MARKETING STRATEGY
In planning the ‘‘Runners. Yeah, We’re Different’’ branding campaign, adidas and Leagas Delaney felt that it was important to speak directly to the runner. Ehringer told Joan Voight of Adweek, ‘‘I am so tired of this huge trend where ads keep telling you that you are not adequate in some way. ‘Be that’ or ‘Do this.’ . . . What is wrong with celebrating the fun-ness of the brand? . . . Better to have a conversation with people, not a conversation at people.’’ In keeping with this belief, and to make the most of adidas’s marketing dollars, Leagas Delaney created a series of colorful print ads that celebrated running with a direct and unique approach only runners would likely appreciate and understand. Ehringer explained, ‘‘The unusual thing about [the campaign] was we were really very literal about it. I think it was pretty courageous to do ads that were so honest about really talking to runners that a lot of people wouldn’t even know what you were talking about.’’ To add an extra element of interest and to further suggest adidas’s bond with runners, many of the ads starred adidas-sponsored runners, talented athletes with little face-recognition value.
One of the early ads was a two-page color spread featuring a male runner—an adidas-sponsored marathon runner—applying bandages to his nipples at a road race. His shirt, with pinned-on race number, was casually tucked into the waistband of his shorts as he completed the bandaging task. Skyscrapers and other runners appeared in the background. A heavyset woman in nonrunning attire, perhaps a spectator, observed the runner’s ritual with a slightly bewildered look, emphasizing how odd the act must appear to nonrunners. The only text in the ad was the adidas logo in one corner and the tagline in another. A second ad showed a walking and running path in a city. A male runner blew his nose in typical runner fashion—with a finger pressed against one nostril to allow the forceful emanation of mucus from the other—as a disgusted nonrunning female looked on. The ‘‘Runners. Yeah, We’re Different’’ slogan appeared in the middle of the ad, and the text at the bottom read, ‘‘You’ve never experienced a support shoe like this. The incredibly smooth ride of the Equipment Tyranny is something different too.’’ The $1 million campaign appeared in running-specific publications such as Runner’s World and Running Times and in the popular magazine Sports Illustrated. Another ad showed two male runners racing a cable car up a steep San Francisco hill as cable car riders looked on. The Vaseline ad featured a male and a female runner getting ready for a race by applying Vaseline to various body parts that might otherwise get rubbed raw while running. The male runner was Peter Julian, who was a four-time all-American while at the University of Portland. Similar ads continued until the campaign ended in 2000.

OUTCOME
The ‘‘Runners. Yeah, We’re Different’’ campaign generated much interest and discussion among runners. The campaign ended in 2000, and some of the final ads were bolder than those from 1998. One 1999 ad, for example, featured a full view of the backside of a naked male runner (two-time 10,000-meter Olympian and four-time 10,000-meter U.S. champion Todd Williams) who stood by the open trunk of his car to change out of his muddy running clothes. Another ad showed a female runner squatting by a tree next to a trail, her shorts pulled down. Although these ads were quite daring, the acts featured were not out of the ordinary for runners. Adidas’s director of marketing communications, Karyn Thale, told Adweek that the company was pleased with the advertising efforts and said, ‘‘It is time to tell our story in the U.S., and the Leagas ads are doing a great job of [expressing] our brand’s young, fresh and hardworking image here.’’ Adidas continued to thrive and in 1998 held onto its number three ranking in the athletic-footwear industry with a 6 percent share, according to market research firm NPD Group, Inc. In comparison, Nike’s retail dollar share was 34 percent and Reebok’s 13 percent. Although overall spending on athletic shoes dropped 6 percent from the previous year, running shoes continued to lead the athletic-footwear category, acquiring 17.1 percent of retail sales. Adidas’s U.S. net sales jumped 68 percent to $1.59 billion, and the running category grew more than 50 percent from 1997. Adidas spokesperson John Fread told the Business Journal of Portland, ‘‘For us, [1998] was an outstanding year, another record.’’ Adidas was definitely back in the game, and it planned to stay there, pursuing its commitment to sports and athletes around the globe.
In the campaign’s final year adidas reached its highest brand awareness in company history. The adidas sales increase during the campaign shocked sporting-goods analysts because running shoes were previously considered a slow-growth category. The print ads collected more awards than print ads released by any other competitor in 2000, and adidas eventually expanded the campaign internationally.