Branding. Done.
Dawn Creative goes through all elements of branding, from the basics through to the real nitty-gritty.
Each episode, we host a new guest, to speak about how different areas of branding have impacted their role, their business, and the projects they have worked on.
We'll speak to MD's, marketing managers, creatives, and people across various businesses to get a variety of viewpoints on why branding, and all the elements within it, are so important.
Branding. Done.
The Evolution of Adidas: 25 Years of Brand + Strategy
Barry Moore, VP of Global Marketing Strategy at Adidas shares insights from his remarkable 25-year journey at the brand, and reveals how the global sports giant maintains its position through strategic marketing frameworks and brand consistency.
In this episode, Dave and Barry talk about:
• Meeting at age 16 as footballers and reconnecting after 30 years
• Landing at Adidas through university connections and strategic networking
• Treating brand loyalty like supporting a football team – no competitive products allowed
• Creating clarity through a global marketing framework that prioritizes 20-30k products
• Building partnerships with athletes that offer product validation, visibility, and brand affinity
• Balancing global consistency with local market adaptation
• Using two logos to separate sports performance from cultural lifestyle products
• Leveraging reactive marketing during sports moments like Jude Bellingham's overhead kick
• Understanding that marketing fundamentals don't change despite new platforms
• Embracing "compound creativity" – the compounding benefits of brand consistency
• Taking a measured approach to AI while exploring its potential applications
The secret to successful marketing isn't complex: define what you're trying to do, decide what success looks like, and focus on consistent execution rather than chasing every trend.
A great episode, one of our favourites so far! We hope you enjoy.
To book a brand or web review, email us at wakeup@dawncreative.co.uk, or go to https://www.dawncreative.co.uk/brand-review/ or https://www.dawncreative.co.uk/web-review/.
Let's talk about when we first met many moons ago. Yeah, from football. Yeah, 30 years ago, yeah, probably Playing for Chile Hume at the time. I've not really seen you properly since then. Just walked into our studio a couple of minutes ago, saw your height again and then remembered why you were the goalkeeper in the team. Yeah, good times.
Speaker 2:Really good times. 16 years old I was at the time playing for a men's team Learned a lot both on the pitch and off the pitch. Learned what TGI Fridays was in Didsbury from the stories that were being told.
Speaker 1:But really, really good times and definitely helped me turn from being a teenager into trying to be a young man anyway.
Speaker 2:stories that were being told um, but really, really good times and definitely helped me. Uh, yeah, turn from being a teenager into, you know, trying to be a young man anyway yeah, um.
Speaker 1:So yeah, we played a couple of seasons together, didn't we? I was at newcastle at the time and just come back, and you were heading to newcastle at the time, yeah, um me telling you probably tales of how good a city it was, and they were true, um pretty sure you experienced the same.
Speaker 2:Definitely, um again. Um, northumbria I went to. I went to northumbria. They were the first, uh, uni in the country to do a sports management degree. So all the degrees before that, the ones that I'd found were all sports science, and I didn't want to do sports science. I want to do sports management, sports marketing, and they're the only ones that did it. So it was a pretty straightforward decision for me. There wasn't really any other option and I didn't want to do sports science. I wanted to do sports management, sports marketing, and they were the only ones that did it, so it was a pretty straightforward decision for me.
Speaker 1:There wasn't really any other option. But on top of that, you were right Newcastle is a great place to spend three years. Yeah Well, as I arrived, it wasn't because of this, but it was voted something like the seven best party city in the world and it was number one in the uk. So I thought, well, I've picked the right place there then. No doubt about it, I can study graphic design and I can have a bit of fun, so perfect combo I think you, uh, it probably still holds that reputation today.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, and actually I had such a good time I'm actually tomorrow, I'm meeting up with my university mates. We have we meet up and still hang out every six months, and so that was. That was how good the time was up there that we were still getting together and they've had some success recently yeah, yeah, doing really well yeah trophy really well. Uh, yeah delighted. Obviously my wife's a liverpool fan, so I had mixed emotions on the day, but from a company perspective, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:I'm an everton fan, so it was quite ended up quite easy for me yeah I studied at newcastle. I'm an everton fan. I'm gonna go with newcastle on the day.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, it's everyone, everyone's second team. And I was lucky. Whilst I was at uni I actually worked for the football club. I was a goalie coach up there, all right, and I've got a bit of allegiance to it as well, and I spent a couple of years being the academy goalie coach whilst I was at uni and that's how I also helped develop. My ability to get into Adidas was that I reached out to the goalie coach up there at the time.
Speaker 2:I walked into my university professor's door the first day of uni and said I want to work for Adidas. I'm here to get a degree, but ultimately it's to go and work for Adidas and the head office is seven minutes down the road from where I live back in Chillingham, which is crazy. Why it's there, who knows. So then he recommended a guy that had done that course two years previous and he said he's a goalkeeper, works at newcastle united and I think he said he's sponsored by, or some has relationship with, adidas. So he said you know you should go and talk to him. So I rang him up and just said you don't know me, but, um, I'm a goalie and, uh, I want to be working out of this. Apparently you've got a link there. Can I come and help you for free? Can I just, yeah, volunteer to help you out in some way, shape or form and maybe pick your brains a bit? Um, his name's Simon Smith, I don't know why. He said, sure, okay, I do summer courses and you can come and help me do that. And so I did that.
Speaker 2:Um, had a great summer with him. Um, and he then said, yeah, do you want to come and help me out? At the academy, he got promoted to the first team goalie coach and he said I need someone to take. Yeah, keep working on the goalies. Do you want to do that? And so I did, for that was my university job whilst I was there, um, and what was also great was, obviously, he has his own business, uh, sam smith goalkeeping. So we got to chat about how that was going and how marketing websites, you know all that sort of stuff, and my dissertation was about how he could improve his website to stand out on you really yeah, so he.
Speaker 2:He is my um. You know, there's people that you meet throughout your life that have been formative, um, and he, um he's definitely one of the most important ones, and we're still in touch today, so it's nice that we can keep talking all these times brilliant, amazing how you can end up somewhere.
Speaker 1:Obviously you had a focus to go to adidas. That's what you wanted to do. Sometimes it is a little bit of who you know, or also being a bit confident to ask the right questions or phone someone and speak to them and get yourself out there and to give yourself this opportunity. So, talking about the role, how you've got there around about 25 years now 25 years in june yeah, in june.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right. So what's that journey been like over that period of time? You know why, why stay so long and, um, you know what kind of kept you there. Why are you still there now?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, so I started 25 years ago and finished my degree and I'd done a placement at adidas in Germany whilst doing my degree so I think what you'd said about having that goal of trying to get to work for Adidas was so important Realized that I was not going to make it as a footballer, so then thought what's the next best thing? And again was fortunate to meet somebody early who described what they did and it sounded like the second best thing to being a sports person. Described what they did and it sounded like the second best thing to being a sports person if you couldn't be an athlete. This person said I didn't basically talk about football all day and choose football boots and all that kind of stuff yeah mally lee, you know.
Speaker 2:Quick reference to mally, yeah, joint friend of ours, yeah, he's been in. So, again, mally gave me that idea early on, um, and then so managed to get a placement, um, at adidas in germany for six months. Um, again, my university professor luck plays a massive part uh, he bumped into a german professor at some professors meeting I don't know what a lot of professors, a lot of professors, um, I can only imagine what sort of professor meeting it was. And, uh, very luckily, the german professor said I've got an ex-student who works for adidas that's looking for an english-speaking marketing person that understands football. And my professor said that's funny, I've got an english-speaking football playing guy who's doing marketing that wants to work at adidas, okay, so, um, we met and I did a placement there for six months uh, nine months, sorry, in 2000, 1999, 1999.
Speaker 2:1999, as I was in Germany, south Germany, the night that man United beat Bayern Munich in the final. I was in an Irish pub in there, so I was the most unpopular man in the pub because I was celebrating. But again, that shows a little bit. Like you said, it's a bit about contact, making clear, if you can, what you're trying to do, where you want to be, and then having the confidence, shall we call it? You couldn't speak german, there was no internet, no mobile phones, all that kind of stuff. But then got on a plane in february of 1999 to germany, landed and just went right, you're here for six, nine months, um off, you go where I went, you know, just tried to survive basically. But I had a great time. I just made myself.
Speaker 2:I thought the idea the best thing to be, make yourself as indispensable as possible yeah just just go out offer your help, you know, try to get involved in projects, just do everything and anything. And I carried that forward into that gave me some contacts, people actually got to know people who worked in the uk and then I started working, got met the people in the uk and then, fortunately, an opening came up as I was finishing my degree to come and work in the uk for adidas to work in football accessories okay um, which then basically means, uh, footballs, shin guards and goldie gloves and, obviously, being a goldie, and I thought, yeah, I can do that.
Speaker 2:So um started there and the reason why I've been there for so long is that great people you know the, the brand, is full of people who are into sport and some are successful sports. People have been pro athletes. A lot of us are failed athletes, um, but we're all still the locker room, the locker room atmosphere. We're all there and that's the best way I can explain Adidas. People sort of laugh at us a little bit, so no one's allowed in my house wearing any competitive products. And people laugh at me because they're like what you want about? And then my kids are not allowed to wear any competitive product unless it's for a team that they have to. So they're not allowed to buy with their own money anything. Because my job is to make our brands the most successful and convince people that ours is the best, and if I can't convince my own kids, then it doesn't make me look good.
Speaker 2:But the reason I explained to them and other people because it's like playing for man United, the culture of a sports brand is like playing for a team. You feel that yours is the best team. So you would never, if you play for man United, you wouldn't rock up for training in a man City top, and that if you wouldn't rock up for training in a man's city top and that's the same for us you'd never, you know, you wouldn't walk around wearing anybody else's product. Because why would you? I play for this team, this is my team and that's why I've been there for 25 years, because you, you love the people, you're the brand. Um, the other part of it, and the last part, is that we just haven't reached our full potential. I don't yet believe the adidas brand has got back to being its best, and it was dominant in the 70s and 80s and I think we've not quite shown how good we can be yet.
Speaker 1:So that's my personal right drive is to get it back to being the best sports brands in the world that's a really interesting take on it, because you talk about, you know, brands generally and people are committed to some and then sometimes not flip, flip, flop from one to the other, yep, but when you support a football team, that's it. Yeah, it's bad practice to say you're going to flip from one to the other. Yeah, you stick with one once you picked it.
Speaker 1:I picked everton good decision in the 80s, not so good now yeah, true um, but I like the fact that you're saying that then the adidas brand for you feels a little bit like supporting a football team. You know it's a cultural thing, kind of wave the flag for the company, hence why you're there for yeah, and I know that's rare.
Speaker 2:I am very conscious that people work for lots of different types of companies and don't get that feeling because it's it's not the same, and so I'm just really lucky to work in sport. But I think I'm lucky and also design my own look, because I was fortunate that I realized early on that I can work in the industry of which I am, that's my hobby.
Speaker 2:If somebody hadn't shown me, if Mally hadn't opened his boot, yeah 30 years ago and shown me I would probably try to be in. I think I want to be a lawyer. Before that, right, and again, I could have been a good lawyer, a bad lawyer, I don't know. Yeah, but, and so I think I'm just lucky that I was able to sort of pick a path that combined my hobbies and also a career.
Speaker 2:So yeah and that's, but again, 25 years, people assume there's something, there's a good reason to be there yeah and a lot is the culture and the people and the brand um, and then, as I say, um fortunately managed to keep progressing through the ranks and still feel challenged and still feel that I have a role to play brilliant.
Speaker 1:Um, you keep referencing the boot that opens. Yeah, I remember mali doing that once and he gave me a blue pair of boots with a number 18 on, yeah, and rooney on the side, yeah, and they were in these boot because he was about to drive to everton to give him them for the next season. Yeah, and where did he move? To man united? Yeah, and so those boots got given to me have you still got them?
Speaker 1:I wore them on that cow field we used to play on and I've probably lost them since, so they couldn't win worth a lot of money it's worth in the loft that is yes, a little bit sad how I've managed to uh to lose them. Um, so brilliant success over 25 years. Yeah, yep, on linkedin it says you create like the marketing framework for the brand. Yep, do you want to explain what that means to to you other people?
Speaker 2:for sure sounds like a big job yeah, um, I mean, well, we had a quick chat before this and we said that marketing can be made to sound super complicated if, um, if you take it as it is a, you know, an intense subject, um, everyone's got an opinion on marketing. It's a quote that I steal from a podcast that I heard that said everyone thinks they're good at three things and one of them is marketing. So everyone thinks you've got an opinion, and I work in a company that's got 70 000 people that work for it. You can work for a company has seven people and everyone's got an opinion about marketing, generally speaking. So therefore, you've got that. Then we make between 20,000 to 30,000 different products every six months.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So if you imagine the amount of products that we make and you imagine everyone who's made that product is really passionate about how good that product is and they want some marketing support behind it because they want the consumer to see how good it is too. So you put those things together and then and obviously then we've got a certain budget still, and also you've still got a consumer that, just you know, is being bombarded every day with lots of information by lots of brands. So if you multiply all those things together, you're just going to get you know, Adidas soup.
Speaker 2:You know, if we just literally try and do it all. So what I'm trying to do, or what I do, is create the marketing framework, which is provider. It's simple really. It's a prioritization framework, and you know what are we trying to do, how are we spending our money, and then how do we then make sure we're achieving the objectives that we want? What we try and do is just make sure that everyone understands it, so that we haven't got 60 000 people, or even I think there's 4 000 people that've got the word marketing in their title and we don't have those people all trying to figure it out for themselves, not because you know they're bad people, but just because they haven't given that clarity. So if everyone's got that clarity that everyone understands, okay, I can see what we're trying to do and then the last part is I don't know this we'll talk about a bit later is there's a bit of flexibility there?
Speaker 2:we know that in china or is different, probably to win in us, or in emerging markets or in europe. You know there's some of those key products that we've talked about. You can't always be the same one around the world, so we do offer some flexibility. So that's my job really is is just to make sure that people have a way of doing marketing in adidas that is consistent, so that when yeah, we can all do it together right, okay, how does that work from, like, a sales department and perspective?
Speaker 1:you know the two should work very closely, um, but I I find out in organizations that sometimes a larger voice that shouts decisions happen. Um, from a sales perspective, you've got people probably shouting at you saying I understand the framework, but we need to do x, y and z. How do you go about trying to to manage that as a team, that that relationship specifically?
Speaker 2:yeah for sure, it's a balance.
Speaker 2:And I mean they the sales side of the business actually really appreciates the clarity that we bring by doing what we do, saying every season that here's the list of priorities, here's the products that we're going to get behind, and that gives us an advantage, because then we can have solid conversations to say we are going to support those products and make them successful, and so that helps them have concrete conversations.
Speaker 2:And then the other side of things yeah for sure, and you need to make sure that there's no point us doing, you know planning to do a great job behind x product if all the retailers want you to talk about why, yeah, so it's also good for us to know that so that, um, you know we can, we can adjust the plans accordingly. So, as ever, it's a, it's a healthy balance between the two. I think we've got a good relationship between, you know, marketing and sales right now. I know it's the um, you know, um traditional sort of attention, point, um, but we all understand the power of consistency and and being clear, and, and we have to be able to do that so that then we know what we're trying to do. Otherwise you end up just bending and flexing to what everybody else wants to do yeah you know, I talked about all the people internally.
Speaker 2:If you then add on all the external partners that tell you what they want you to do as well, you know, again, you end up doing 10 000 things, not very well, and I think everybody understands that's not, that's not a great formula for success so within that framework you mentioned like brand at the top, I think then maybe three core areas to focus on.
Speaker 1:It's all predetermined, so everyone kind of understands where we're heading. You also briefly touched on a global market, mentioned China, for example. That framework exists but then gets adapted slightly in places because of cultural changes or there's more of a demand or a movement or a trend in a different country.
Speaker 2:Is that how that would typically then play out? Completely, yeah, I mean we're a global brand and we say that we've got a local mindset, so I work with seven brand directors who look after those different markets.
Speaker 2:So the world for adidas yeah so there's seven brand directors and represent china or europe or north america or whatever it might be, and we work together on that framework. So we identify, you know, what we think are the right choices to make at the time. But then we also then either it could be the same choice, it's the same product, and we say, yeah, we all believe in that. Um, we'll say that global will create some tools behind it. You know some marketing content and some tools. But then obviously then a certain market might say, look, can we take that, that toolkit you've produced, but can we then localize it?
Speaker 2:yeah we want to talk about the same product, but can we just adapt it for our culture? Yeah, you know, and chinese new year's huge and there's certain things and certain colors or certain language that you know you can and can't use, so of course we want them to do that other times.
Speaker 2:There are products or themes or looks that just don't work in certain parts of the world yeah so again, we, you know, have a conversation with them to say, yeah, okay, you know we'll do this, but it doesn't make any sense for you to try and do it too. So we have to be realistic. You know, there's no point having the best plan on a piece of paper just because it looks pretty on a PowerPoint slide yeah, you know it's got to live in the real world as well.
Speaker 1:But when you've learned there, where you were saying that you may already know that something might not work, there was a time where you didn't know that was the case, so you've got to trial it to find out that it fails. People don't seem to like that in marketing, as we got into more and more data in know in recent years, it's like well, if I do that, what do I get back? Always seems to be there has to be an exact result to it. But to get to that point, sometimes you've got to have done something to know then that that isn't the way you go about doing it yeah, you're right, um, in in terms of in the past we've not had the opportunity to really test before you go to market.
Speaker 2:You just have to go and do it, go live. I think we have got more tools these days to try and do that. But even focus groups, they can't predict the future. They can't tell you exactly how things are going to go, what trends are going to happen. We know that trends, you know, kind of happen for lots of reasons these days. It's not just one way. So we've done it in the past.
Speaker 2:We have launched product um. We have. It's not worked as well as we wanted it to um. We have left it there and said, no, no, it will work, and it still hasn't worked. Yeah, that's going back a few years now. So I think now I would say our approach is very different um, that if something is not looking like working, then you know we aren't afraid to pivot, we aren't afraid to kind of change um. We're lucky that as a brand, because we are a worldwide brand, we've got a lot of reach, a lot of marketing tools and if we do decide to make something a focus for ourselves, we have got a lot of options to be able to do that. So, generally speaking, when we decide that something is going to be a big push for us because of investment, the partners, the visibility, the media, the kudos, all the things we are lucky to have, then generally speaking, we are nine times out of ten, pretty successful at it, but it doesn't mean that there is that one out of ten time that it can still happen.
Speaker 1:So over those 25 years, obviously a lot of change. Do you see more radical change as we're getting getting you know, into your 25th, 26, 27 years? Are things changing at a faster rate than what they used to before? I didn't ask them to be more agile. How's the landscape changing for you as a big global brand?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's a funny one that, um, marketing isn't changing it, you know massively. I mean there's new mediums that come through, of course, but from my perspective, yeah, we've still gone through the, the area of the era of the, the henry ford mass marketing model that lasted sort of 30 40 years. We moved into a more like, much more targeted model for the next sort of 30 40 years. You know crm and, being really specific, now I think we're in the erinberg bass.
Speaker 2:You know how brands grow, kind of realization that there's some fundamental principles of marketing. You've got to reach like buyers. You've got to go out there and no matter how big your brand is or whatever it is, you've got to go and reach a lot of people all the time because mentally they're just not thinking about your brand. You know there's lots of great stats I'm sure you've all seen them, but you know people are only thinking about your brand maybe 5% of the time if you're lucky. So all that is a realization that marketing doesn't change that much and as a brand we're the same.
Speaker 2:We have to deal with that internally or from a world perspective. Yeah, the world's changing a lot quicker. You know there's a lot of things going on. There's a lot of issues, topics, developments, etc. I think consumers in particular we talk about young consumers a lot they have to deal with a lot more so, um, you know, internally, from an ad perspective, we've got to be able to balance those two things. Don't complicate marketing too much, like try and make sure you're aware of what works generally speaking, but, on the other hand, be aware of the situation, the environment that we're playing within and be aware of the conditions that you're trying to play within, both from a consumer perspective, media perspective, political perspective, and and just make sure we're kind of taking all those things into account okay from a brand perspective.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I reference this story partly made up by myself, but also there may be some truth behind it as well. But I'm old enough to remember what I would class as the original adidas brand yeah, which is now called originals, but the trefoil logo, that particular brand, yep, some iconic trainers, yep, from gazelles and specials I'm happy to wear in today, thank you. Um. And then the rebrand that happened to what I'd class as maybe the current logo, yeah. And then the reinvention of originals actually being a thing which was kind of a 70s, 80s, retro feel yeah, in between that there was also the I think it's called neo circles and like that got introduced as another range. I personally, for a brand perspective, started to question that because it seemed quite odd to have a time, three logos in place for a global brand, which isn't really the right approach. Um, so the neo disappears relatively quickly, I think, but it's a really strange kind of pull on the original. Still, it's great that it's in play and it must give you great success, yep, but it's not the norm, is it?
Speaker 2:No, we talk about it a little bit in terms of why we've got two logos now.
Speaker 2:Because you're right in terms of there, why we've got two logos now. Um, because you're right in terms of there's a. There's a couple of schools of thought in terms of there's a school thought. We know brands should have one logo, um, but there's another school of thought that says that then limits you to be able to then be different things to different people if you're the same logo underneath it all. So we've got two and we explain them really simply um, because we describe ourselves as a sports brand. Yeah, so we have a sports logo, which is the three bar pyramid yeah and and we're also the sports brand, but with the culture born from it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's the originals logo, the trefoil three leaf logo, yeah, so those two logos define basically how we want to be perceived by the consumer, because we think we think it's important that you know we see you as a sports brand, so innovative, innovative, technical, you know best for the athlete, it's going to help me perform, functional, all that kind of good stuff and it's important that we think that people see that and go right, you've invested your science and everything in that, whereas then trefoil is then okay, that's the culture born from it, that's lifestyle, that's more about a look and a feel and a style and a design that you know you can wear off the pitch whatever it is, so we're able to then separate those two, and that gives us a lot more freedom, if you like, to then not worry about people getting confused as to, yeah, what products designed to do what.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we, we use that as well from our retailers so that they can also understand you know which retailers are going to be buying what. So that's the in terms of how we're there, in terms of the history of it, um, the history is yeah, you're right, trefoil came in the 70s. Yeah, and before that, the only logo that has really stood the real test of time is three stripes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is a brand mark that has been around since we started um, and if you take the logos off any product and just have three stripes, I would say people still know it's adidas. Um, but truffle came in the 70s and then, um, the three bar um pyramid came in the 90s with peter moore, who designed that when he came to the brand as a consultant. So, um, that's how they evolved and then, yeah, I would agree, over between the 2000s and till now, we've we've definitely had a a twisty journey in terms of how many logos and uh, and where they sit because the neo circle seemed like a bit of a maybe a mistake at the time.
Speaker 1:you know, I talk a lot about brands having a logo for logo's sake. I'm not saying you're there, but the times where people create basically a logo for a product range, then, like, features change and then they all start fighting for attention to the main brand logo, yeah, um, there's always that tricky path, isn't it? Because I think people within organizations again you said earlier, everyone's got an opinion on marketing quite often that we need a logo for that and if, like, we need it as a badge to have some kind of confidence to make a sale, rather than saying, well, we don't, actually, that's just a product line or it just needs a description I completely agree and you're right.
Speaker 2:I mean exactly as you said it. I mean people come into new jobs, new positions, new roles, or the brands having a little bit of a dip and it's not just ours, it's. That's what happens, you know, and then people come in and go. I need to show that I'm adding value.
Speaker 2:Um, I need to show that we're you know something's different about what we're doing and unfortunately, that what tends to be the pattern is people add yeah, things yeah, and then you especially when you're a brand that's older 76 years, you know the amount of stuff that gets added yeah what we've been doing over the last three to five years um added us now, so last three years mainly is trying to take stuff away. Yeah, or not even take it away, but just put it into the right place yeah so you're right, some logos that people.
Speaker 2:What kind of logo is that? It's? It's a product logo and so, yeah, you're absolutely right, we have, we're stripping it back and keeping it to the essence of what it should be. And I know, again, back to mark ritsons of this world you know your brand proposition you should build. It's one line yeah it's not a brand bible. It's not kind of lots of writing and presentations and powerpoints and pictures. So sports brand culture born from it. Right, okay, that's who you are. Yeah, great now. So, um, same with logos.
Speaker 1:Um, we're definitely on that journey to, to simplify, yeah, yeah, I talk about simplification all the time, and you know people are great at adding more and more stuff, making it more complicated. We're in a busy world. As it is, so fewer words as possible in your strategy, the more people can memorize it. Action it actually go somewhere. A 90 page document is not really going to do that for you, is it so?
Speaker 2:no, we definitely subscribe to that and you know people should know exactly. You know who we are. So we've created the. You know, from my perspective, like I, there wasn't the Adidas way of marketing. It was lots of kind of acknowledge and experience. So we've created that over the last three years where there's very simple things like a SharePoint internally where people can click onto and say this is how we do marketing. So anyone that knew that joins can go somewhere and go.
Speaker 2:Okay, and there's one way and there's one language, one terminology and logo usage, etc. So that's really important. And then the other part of it is then consistency, and you know we work with the system. One team recently about the research they did on compound creativity, about how the more consistent you are, the the better your work and the better your brand performs and your business. Yeah, so, um, andrew tindall came to a conference of ours recently and presented, and to the global marketing team to present that work so that they hear it from another voice, not just mine that you know consistency is a is a real superpower and funny enough, you can learn that sport.
Speaker 2:Surprise prize you sounds like you've seen the presentation. We, we absolutely do. Yeah, you're right, yeah, and we talk about doing the basics brilliantly, and that's what elite athletes do on a daily basis, and that's what you need to do in marketing, too.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, completely agree. So we move on to something that you could argue has been around for years, and we might come back to this a little bit later. Um, but we talk about partnerships in the modern world and how you go about one, picking them, managing them, the good and bad of that. Um, I'm sure you'll have conversations where you think hope it goes right or not. What's your view on that kind of approach? You're a global brand anyway. People know you. Like you said, you're in all corners of the world.
Speaker 2:Why do we need to create other partnerships to try and yeah, um, I mean, the first point is we can only create the best product for the athlete if you genuinely work with the best athletes in the world and that they genuinely feel comfortable wearing your product to perform in. They are the tools of their trade, you know they. That's what they get paid for their reputations based on how they perform. Yeah, so you know it's a validation of the fact that you know we make the best product out there, because, yes, obviously you know we, uh, we pay them. Of course we do, um, but at the same time, you know, if the product didn't live up to it, they wouldn't wear it. You know it's just. It's just, you know, not worth the money that we pay them to for them to not be able to perform in their in their product.
Speaker 2:So we do that, um, primarily for that reason. On top of that, of course, there's a couple of other things, um, one is now social media and the reach of athlete. Social media is significant, and so our top 100 ish partners have a combined social media reach of 2.3 billion. Wow, so that gives you a sense of the impact they have, the reach that they have. And we go back to like reaching, reaching like buyers and reaching consumers, etc. You know that it's just a really good opportunity and platform, um, and it's, it's credible, it's authentic. You know it's them, and so that's another really big positive behind partners and of course, not every athlete that we work with has got that kind of reach, but, um, you know, certain ones do and we need to make sure that, um, we're present in that.
Speaker 2:And then the last part is, of course, like brand affinity. You know, um certain partners that bring a certain aspiration or a certain connection that you want to have with the consumers kind of feeling around sport. So I use the all blacks as a great example. You know they are a fantastic representation of what sport generally is. It's it's aggressive in terms of competitive sport, but they've got respect, they've got values, they've got a way of working, a way of playing, and you know that as a team, you know people look at them and they think, yeah, that's, that's a team that really represents sport to me. So by us being the brand that are working with them, you know we really hope that that that rubs off on us as much as the other way around as well. You know the fact that we as a brand have got a great reputation as well, it also helps them as well.
Speaker 1:So, um yeah, partners have got, um, a few things to offer I guess there's always a risk to be ran in any partnership, isn't it? Because it's slightly out of your hands, um, and whether that's a, a team that wear your kit and then their performance starts to get weaker and weaker and they drop down the league, there's an association with you could be. An individual does something incorrect and that kind of jars against you. I always remember, um, a night campaign, I think, for a world cup or european champs or something like that, and they picked out five of the best players I think it's maldini and people like that, you know, like captains and certain players yep, billboards everywhere had shells and I think maybe not all of them, but most were injured and never played in the tournament at all.
Speaker 1:So you've even got those risks, haven't you, where your whole campaign's based around those players, but then they actually don't play in this ornament through injury and stuff like that. So, yeah, it's a. It's a funny ground to play, isn't it? But when you, when you use those numbers that you've mentioned with 2.3 billion yeah, it's big you'd be stupid not to try and entertain it, wouldn't you?
Speaker 2:yeah, and even if you take our size and scale out of it, you know you could be a smaller brand that works with one or two partners. And the key thing is finding that connection between you know the partner and your brand. You know, as I say, you can be one one, one partner. If you've got one athlete and you're trying to make sure you're building a connection between them, it's just making sure that they, they deliver a certain feeling, a certain mindset, a certain thought process in the consumer's mind. That helps your brand. And if it's just visibility, fine, yeah. But at the same time you you would look to make sure that you know there are certain traits or aspirations or values that they help transfer across and there's a little bit of a association between the two.
Speaker 2:Um, we're lucky these days that media wise, like you said, the uncertain circumstances in the past, you know you would just make your ad, tv ad and then you'd send it out and off. You go back in the 2000s um, and you'd hope that everything worked out okay. Yeah, um, these days, obviously, we've got um much more uh opportunity to adapt creative as you go. So even if, if we really needed to, you can adapt the creative at a very short sort of turnaround. Social media plays a great proactive so we work in in terms of. We made up word pre-active and reactive sense, so before a sporting moment, we'll try to make sure that we activate a partner beforehand. So the brand slogan that we have now you got this was designed specifically so that we don't have to wait for the athlete to perform well for us then to celebrate and go. Look, we sponsor them Because we don't think sport's all about that.
Speaker 2:You shouldn't just have to wait until someone does something good to be able to go. Oh, we sponsor them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We should be proud of who responds before they do anything. And actually the message to kids in particular isn't you know, go out and as long as you win, we'll celebrate you. Yeah, the message is go out, do your best and we'll celebrate the fact that you're taking part, you're participating and you're pushing yourself great, and if you win or not, fine. So we, we celebrate before sporting moments now and then okay, if something does happen in the game, then we'll celebrate it as well. It might not be a winning, so jude bellingham's overhead kick he did in the euros again. That was, I think, one of the best tactical pieces we've done recently.
Speaker 2:So we flipped our logo upside down yeah at the same time as he was upside down. So your partners give you the opportunity to convey your own message.
Speaker 1:As I say, we do it in the timing, uh, not just the message as well and something like that, where it's reactive to a moment and the speed of producing the content, then how does that quickly happen? So the game could be on a saturday night everyone's sat at home enjoying the game. Some, some narratives got to happen quite quickly, because if you don't, if you go, we probably do that tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 2:You've missed it yeah, we've got an amazing social media team. Yeah, and that's their, their job and their role, um. But because they know the strategy as well, you know, we've said beforehand, you know, and as part of the way in which we've delivered the framework or the way of adidas marketing, we've made it a thing that we said our usp is that we can react or we can plan for things to happen beforehand and then we want to make sure that we're reacting afterwards. So that's that's kind of set up for success.
Speaker 2:At that stage, we're not waiting for jude to do the overhead kick and suddenly turning to each other, going, oh, that would be good, um, so they're already in place, they've already got um teams ready. So I don't think they are necessarily sat at home, they're on the, they're on the decks. Yeah, people are working. Yeah, 24 7. Obviously, we've got global teams as well. Again, fortunate, across all time zones, we have teams working um, and it's not always the middle of the night, depending on where they work, but, yeah, those teams are designed to be ready to react.
Speaker 1:But you're not saying you planned the overhead kick as well. We're not going that far. No, I can't take that credit.
Speaker 2:I'm afraid no, no. But we've got the teams that are there to, especially during a major tournament. We call it the newsroom, and it functions like a newsroom used to do in terms of, like you know, being sat there waiting to respond, and they'll have all the relevant tools and um and facilities. They need to be able to then make decisions quickly and the approval process will be done rapidly. So even things like that with the agents and the players, they've pre um, pre-briefed them to say, look, during the tournament, if something happens, we're going to be looking to celebrate it, so we just need you know, for you to get back to us quickly. So that's the sort of level of detail that the team's going into so you've worked your way up to the top about an ass yeah, not quite well, no, but high up, yeah, over 25 years successful career yeah, no argument there.
Speaker 1:So there's lots of people listening in, maybe in the early phases, going back to when you were, you know, trying to get into adidas, or even people three, four, five years in. We're always learning in this particular space. Is there any particular advice you could give people about ultimately managing a global, successful brand but, at the same time, not everyone's has that luxury either, do they? Maybe sometimes a harder job, possibly, where they're trying to get a brand noticed? For sure, any, any kind of tips or advice you would give people? Gonna be a few of.
Speaker 2:You want to, but no, I mean, um, it's just, it's not going to be anything groundbreaking, um, it is just the simple stuff. And first one is what are you trying to do? It's the question that my boss um, I've had the same boss for quite a few years, or we've worked together for quite a few years um, it's the one question that we always come back to. You know, regardless of what the situation is, the size, the scale, whatever it might be, what are we trying to do? And you need to be able to answer that in a very clear, simple, non-marketing way. You need to be able to answer that in a very clear, simple, non-marketing way. You need to be able to kind of get that clear. And if you can do that, that's the starting point. And it's not a long answer. It's not trying to fit in as many different things as you can, because you're ticking the box. I've mentioned this, this, this isn't this. It's, ultimately, what are you trying to do?
Speaker 2:And then the second question is what does success look like, genuinely like? What is what, if some, what would you describe as being? You know the success of this? Again, not in kpi or roi or whatever it might be type kind of terms you can. You can do that later. Just what is the? The consumer's response? You know, what do you want to think? Do feel, say there's got to be something that you're asking a consumer to do, and if you've got those two things, then that's your start point and that's your end point. Then the rest is like okay, now, how do we get from A to B? Sounds simple, should be simple, but again, I think I work in strategy, and strategy is deciding what you're not going to do, and that's again something that we talked about, kind of stripping layers out of your business, stripping layers out of your brand, your messaging. It's the same when you're thinking what are you not going to do, because you could try and do a bit of everything and again, that doesn't necessarily a recipe for success. So that's my first thing is is have that kind of mindset.
Speaker 2:The second one, and only two, really is is listen to people that know more about marketing than you do, too. Really is is listen to people that know more about marketing than you do, and there are people who are really good at it. I spent years doing it. So, um, byron sharp, for example. Um, how brands grow again the book at the minute of the last few years that people I think only now, more recently, accrediting it with actually speaking the most sense in terms of how all brands grow, not certain brands of certain sizes in certain ways.
Speaker 2:So use people's knowledge to then go right. Okay, you don't have to figure out marketing for yourself. You know we're not nasa. It's not like we're going into places we've never been before. Somebody's probably been there before. So use great resources like erinberg bath. Use walk world advertising research. You know they've got websites, they've got information, so they've got the effectiveness ladder WALK in terms of they judge all the entries, or they helped to judge all the entries that go into awards every year awards every year and so they look at all the brands that are trying to show how good they are and what they do is they study all the different entry points and what they did and who did it best, and they then take all that information and then summarize what worked best.
Speaker 2:Again, the information is there yeah so you don't need to go and figure out for yourself. Um, and then the other people I talk about mark ritson, he definitely knows what he's doing. If you see any of his stuff on LinkedIn or YouTube. He wrote the program for brand management at a university in America. This guy knows what he's doing. And then System One, andrew Tindall and John Evans. Those guys again, they test every single advert that goes out in the UK and the US and they test the response from the consumer so they know what works and what doesn't work and why so.
Speaker 1:And they test the response from the consumer so they know what works and what doesn't work and why. So again, this is pre going out to a wider audience.
Speaker 2:It can be pre yeah, it can be post, it can be during. So they did something with I think it was the ipad when apple launched that recently and it was the ad where they the ipad, got crushed. Oh yeah, um. And they tested that and obviously there was quite a lot of talk about it at the time in terms of it left people feeling not great. People thought it should have been the other way around. So they did it in reverse and tested it in reverse and the scores went dramatically up. So system one again, just a great.
Speaker 2:They don't just do TV ads, they do out of home stuff as well. So obviously you have to have a relationship with them, a contract with them, you have to pay them to do certain studies, but just in terms of them, they post all the time about what they know generally, and so those are my, if you like, go-tos. Use other people who are, like I say, really good at marketing and can give you a lot of great advice or great information. That means that you don't have to make mistakes and learn from them.
Speaker 1:You can learn from other people's mistakes first what do you think about someone just having a creative idea?
Speaker 1:that's maybe a bit out there a bit different and being brave enough to think that could or could not work without over testing it. So the one I use as an example if I still google best adverts ever and something similar, the gorilla from Cadbury's will still come up. It's 21 years old Now. That was a struggle to even get that anywhere near TV, I believe. The story goes. I couldn't get it out of the agency. Eventually did. Cadbury's said clear off, wouldn't have it, and eventually still managed to get it to go. It increased global sales by seven percent as a result. Who'd have definitely known that beforehand. How much of testing can you do on such a abstract concept which still got cut through and then had a success at the end of it?
Speaker 2:yeah, so you should definitely go and check uh system. One have tested it, so they show the response and it scored ridiculously high. I think it's the perfect score.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think, and so the immediate response to it was proven to be yeah, this is a feel good factor, happy, you know, kind of like wow, this is great. So it did test amazingly. What is interesting, though, I think either System One or Ritson then do a commentary around it to say but the cadbury brand, it wasn't a sustainable strategy. So, even though that was an amazing ad, yeah and it lasted six months.
Speaker 2:In terms of the halo effect, like you say, the sales effect, etc. They couldn't keep it going. Yeah, they couldn't. It wasn't a long-term platform. So you know, walk talk about having a universal insight and a limitless idea. So universal insight is you're not you when you're hungry, so sneakers. So that's a universal insight and a limitless idea. So universal insight is you're not you when you're hungry, so sneakers so that's a universal insight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you know. If you know, that's great. So now that's a limitless idea for all the different ways in which they can show that to be true or that to be relevant to you or to me or to you. So they want, you need those two things, and what that didn't have was that yeah you know it's a one-off and limitless idea.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, so it just depends now if what they wanted to do is spike interest, just spike. Hey, this is an amazing ad and it's free to be known years down the line as a great piece of work. Fantastic, yeah, and that's great. It worked, job done. So all what were they trying to do if they were trying to build a long-term brand platform that allowed them to pay into it over years? Now, what they've got now? A glass half full, yeah, is that, and it's brilliant, yeah, and they've been paying into that for three, four, five, six years, yeah, and it's working way better for long-term brand health, because people are now starting to associate memory structures with, you know, glass and half full yeah and the recent packaging.
Speaker 2:They did um, where they identify certain situations and give certain segments depending on how much you contributed to that particular occasion. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant. So, yeah, again, really. Again. A great example, though how you know there's a piece of work out there, but you don't have to do the thinking for yourself. There's other people that have already done lots of things around it, yeah, and that you don't have to adopt their point of view, but at least you can educate yourself and kind of go, oh right, okay, well, I now think this because I know that and that, and so, from our perspective, you know, what would you choose? There's a great question Would you choose, you know, rewind time as a brand? Would you say you can either have the best performing ad of all time, the Gorilla Bit, and not have long-term sales.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or you can have the long-term sales run. Yeah, great question. Yeah, I mean the. The way that you summed it up for people is is fantastic, but again it comes down to the, the word of simplicity. So it has to be simple for enough people to understand it and remember it and recall it. And then the clever bit is that it's it's simple enough to be broad enough to have lots of ideas behind it. Yes, yes, so you've got a campaign for a long period of time. Each execution could be quite different, but it's all underpinned by a final sign off or a final concept and that's the.
Speaker 2:That's the principle of memory structures. Yeah, so mental availability that's erinberg bass is phrase not mine. Mental availability putting in the consumer's mind that you as a brand shortcut code means this. So when you hear, um, the mcdonald's chime or the whistle or the red or whatever it might be you hear the sound. When adele or an intel starts, you know instantly who it is. Yeah, and it's about building that mental availability. Um, and again, that's what, um, you know categories are starting to do now and then system one, then support that long-term approach because they have this thing called compound creativity, that the benefits that you get by being consistent improve in a compound way. So, like, if you save money in the bank and it has compound interest on it, the more consistent you are every year you say the same thing or do the same memory structures, the more interest you get in the consumer's mind. Yeah, and again, that's something that, as a brand, you know coming into these things. If you like, marketeers, the advice is just trust the process yeah which again is another sporting phrase.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and trust the process. You know you're going to build long-term brand health or brand success. Sometimes it's not about next week sales or next month sales, it's. It's kind of make sure you just keep doing these things consistently well.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, it comes down to people over-communicating. For me they're guilty of. We've got something. Let's put 20 bullet points on it and in the digital platform, if all of those 20 bullet points are really important to you, you could actually do it over 20 separate posts and let people understand one by the other. And it might be point four.
Speaker 2:That's a trigger for them to engage, but they'll never read all 20 and they won't remember them either. I think humans can remember what? Three to five things maximum. If you're lucky, there's a great the book essentialism. A great book, um, just talks about priorities, basically, and the word priorities was only ever invented, singular, so it could only be a priority.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we humans changed it to be priorities yeah in fact it's impossible to have priorities, because you should only really have what's what's your priority, your main thing. But that's classic in marketing make sure it does this, this, this, this, this, this, this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good luck. No great, um. So, moving away from that, let's look at um ai where, where we sat on that as a, as a brand and from a marketing perspective, you know, are you fully engaged with it and doing loads of interesting things, or have you got a plan for the future?
Speaker 2:we're and we're healthily. Uh, what should I say? Curious, okay, um, we're not at the cutting edge. We're not like saying we have to be the first brand that goes out and does everything with ai. Yeah, because that's that's hard to do because it's moving all the time. At the minute, I don't think we're quite yet at the point where people know exactly what the best thing to do is. So what we are doing is spending a lot of time looking into various aspects of it. So there's people in different departments, because obviously ai's got lots of different potential usages, potential um problems as well. It's not all rosy, it's not all going to make, you know, marketing better, um, so we're just exploring, you know, in terms of content production. Does it make it quicker, better, faster, cheaper, and or does it not generate the same emotional response, etc. Etc. So we're using that um. Can it help us develop concepts so that we can see what we're trying to do quicker? Yeah, maybe um could it help us localize, potentially, etc. So, um, there's other things as well, though.
Speaker 2:Ai can be used for brief writing, for example. Yeah, you know you, uh, you look at ai as being this thing that can only replace humans. It's a bad thing. It's about robots coming in and taking over. But actually, if you think about ai as being something that you can teach or it can teach you, and the more that you teach it what you want to be good at, the more it teaches you how to do it. So it could be brief writing, where you input a lot of the best briefs you've written or that other people have written and say we want to write briefs like that, and then every time you write a brief, you submit it to it and it comes back and says seven out of ten yeah you could.
Speaker 2:That could be better. That could be better. Does that help you be better brief writers? Yeah, does it save you time because no one's having to sit there and do it? Yeah, so there's a little bit that you kind of go okay, that's interesting. Yeah, none of those are live projects.
Speaker 2:We're not kind of actively chasing any of those, I'm just using those as random examples, to say that, as a brand, we've got a lot to think about before we start going into AI, because I think it's one that you've got to be careful around. There's a temptation to be. You know we always, we all know, in marketing you have first mover advantage. There's also first mover problems as well. Yeah, so we're just having a think about what's the right usage and what's the right time to do it. But the last part, so I would just it's coming, yeah, it will. It will make its way into marketing in the next three to five years. You know people that are starting to do marketing now weren't really know a time but they didn't exist. Yeah, they wonder how we ever did it Like we are when we, you know, when the internet came in and social media came in and we, you know, we sit here now and go oh yeah, I remember what it was like before. That. I think it's going to be one of those effects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's loads of things it's got advantages for. It's another tool to use. I think from a creative perspective, we just need to be careful. Just because it can do whatever you ask it to do doesn't make that a good idea. You used the word concept at one point. You've still got to have created a concept first, and that often means using your brain and not looking at loads of things that have happened in the past because the idea would be trying to do something that maybe hasn't been seen before.
Speaker 1:I agree, if it's conceptually tight, you could get your ideas out the blocks quite quickly with ai to go. This is how it could look and feel. Then you can decide the execution. Is that an actual photo shoot or not, for example? And can we even have the time for the photo shoot? Have we got the budget for a photo shoot? All of those questions come into play. Without the concept, it hasn't got much to it, and that's my biggest concern that people might use it as a tool just to spit stuff out because it can, and then think, oh, what we've created and you go, but doesn't mean anything no, and that's what we keep.
Speaker 2:That's what we're saying in terms of. There are considerations and caution around it. There's just a. The danger becomes when people try to do things too fast, too soon because they're worried about being who's first. Yeah, and I know why, and it's good to be first, but I think we just have to make sure that everyone, including adidas as well just this you know, uses it or thinks it through responsibly yeah.
Speaker 1:So being either ahead of the curve or looking at how markets change, I'd say in. I know, let's say, last five or ten years there's been more new brands, maybe sport brands, um, you know, I'm old enough to remember there was only a handful. Um, how do you look at those new brands coming into the market and what impact does that make on you? Because at some point some sales are being taken away from you. Yeah, whatever that might be, let's say, with leggings for gyms, stuff I has lots of different brands in that particular space, um, but at the same time, when a new brand comes into the market, people can play oh that's new and I want to buy the new thing. And sometimes they could be a bit more agile than a big company because, unfortunately, over time, your operating systems or processes could be a bit slow and cumbersome and they can use new technology and move a bit quicker. How have you found that landscape? Or does it not concern you too much?
Speaker 2:doesn't concern us too much, and not because we think we're, you know, so big and so good, and just because you know a sportswear is something that is growing exponentially. If you look over the last 10-15 years, just the adoption of sportswear, you know most people can wear sportswear to work these days, yeah, and so that's something that has grown and grown and grown. So the overall size of the market continues to get bigger and bigger. Sport itself, live sport, is not coming off anytime soon. In fact it's merging with culture. You know, what did you do last night? Quite a lot of the time there's a conversation that says either I watched sport, went to sport, whatever it might be, so sport is always going to be, I think, there and I think that the adoption of it in lots of different scenarios. Again back to our point about the two logos sport and the culture born from it it allows us to have that differentiation.
Speaker 2:So for us, we feel that there's a big market out there. We're not that big that we we can't generate more market share simply by just getting better ourselves. So we're not necessarily worried about what other people are doing. It's more about us doing the best that we can do. Um, you know, overall market share globally. You know we've still got a lot of headroom to go yeah and that that means that you know we can concentrate on ourselves.
Speaker 2:And back to the sporting analogies as you know, don't worry about the opposition, worry about playing your game yeah, getting as good as you can and then let them worry about you.
Speaker 2:So, um, as I say not meant in an arrogant or a cocky way more about just that. You know again, if people come to to you and talk about their business, you have to be aware of the competition, of course you do. You know you can't be you seem to be copying somebody else and what they're doing. But you'll be saying, concentrate on what you're trying to do and make sure that you're clear on that. So, yeah, it's uh, for me it's exciting, yeah, it's just a really, you know, healthy, good time to be in the sportswear industry.
Speaker 1:If we talk about, there's some of those new entrants that we've talked about and potentially trends, people moving a little bit from one brand to the other, maybe quicker than they have done before. Yeah, I don't like the word trend in brands. Brands specifically like brand identity.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because for me, if you get it right as early on in your journey as you can, then you should evolve through time and generally be current or slightly ahead of the curve. Yeah, but not a trend, because next year the trend will change. Currently, your brand is out of date. You probably have a slight balance here between the brand core brand and then being fashion brand or a sports brand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, things change yeah how do you kind of manage that, those two things really, and that could be going back to the trefoil brand and and the time that had, and then the resurgence again that seems to be coming back yeah, no, it's um.
Speaker 2:So the two parts, the two sides of the business, uh, sports brand and the culture born from it. Sport brand is. That's, that's why we say that. That's who we are first. You know, ultimately, the reason why we exist is because we're a sports brand. If we, if we stop doing that, then yeah, we are then just a fashion brand yeah so we need to make sure we're continuing to innovate.
Speaker 2:That's the most important thing there in terms of the product and the design. So Predator, for example even though it's been around since 94, we brought that back, put the tongue back on it, improved it all that kind of good stuff. So we just need to make sure we're constantly innovating. That Evo SL or Evo as a running shoe the lightest running shoe out there wins 50% of all races professionally. So we're creating products that are changing the world of sport. And the anthony edwards shoe was named shoe of the year again he's performing in it. He's great. And again, new technology. So so we have to keep bringing newness to the sporting goods industry through sport, first, again through the lens of best for the athlete, and then that allows better performance from a lifestyle perspective or the culture born from it. Yeah, it's about life cycles and we're lucky that obviously, um, samba has had a really big trend, as you called it. Yeah, but that's a. Rather than calling it a trend, I call it a life cycle yeah um, not, it can be called a trend, don't get me wrong yeah
Speaker 2:um, but we saw samba getting popular maybe three or four years ago. But then it's about how you then take care of that trend and then maximize it at the right time, maintain it in the right way and at some point decline it in the right way, so that you deliberately kind of look after it, so that you protect it for the future. You know there are times when if you don't do all those things in the right way, then you can either try to commercialize it too soon and it doesn't quite do it, or you try and commercialize it for too long and then it ends up a bit of a problem, or you miss it altogether and you don't scale it quick enough. So that part of the business is just about getting the timings right in terms of how you manage life cycles, which everyone knows, the principles of life cycle management. And then there's the other part of that is having something else to come in and support it and replace it, so that we're not just one shoe.
Speaker 2:You know one trend, and then when it doesn't quite, when it dips off again, ah, we're off trend, it's okay. So right, okay, we had it. Now what else is coming? You know, gazelle came, or then and spezia came, or campus came, or superstar or stan smith yeah, you know, you've got to look and make sure that your, your life cycles are all planned out yeah, some of that staying current, isn't it as well?
Speaker 1:the person that is doing well at the time or um, has got a following. You know you mentioned anthony edwards, for example, basketball shoe, potentially riding a wave there as well. But do you just see that as a good opportunity, a good partnership? Is it also a strategy to try and compete with anything that Nike's doing from the success they had with Air Jordan and stuff like that, or is it just a separate thing?
Speaker 2:It's taking the same core principles in terms of, um, make the best product you can make for the athlete or for the sport, that still doesn't change, regardless of who's wearing it. It's like, can we make the best basketball shoe out there and then it gets multiplied by the player? Has the player got, you know, the performance? Is he playing well? Does he do things on the court that make people kind of take notice? Um, has he got a personality that allows people to kind of go I like him, yeah, um, because you can be the best player in the world. But if people don't like you, it's slightly different. And then you know, you look at then the advertising and the marketing around it and kind of go, right, if we can take the product, the player, the performance, the personality, can we stick that together in in some content and some a piece of marketing that allows people to go, yeah, I get, I get it, I like it. So the recipe again is not complicated. It's just sometimes it's about a bit of look, sometimes obviously about a bit of design, and then, yeah, the marketing side of things and you know, we, we kind of pour, uh, pour petrol on the flames really, because I was doing a great job anyway. And then the content that we've been producing with him, with the peach background and all the different, uh iterations of his content, really plays into those factors. So so we weren't trying, we didn't.
Speaker 2:The objective wasn't like go and look again, look at the competition. Yeah, it was more about what's the best version of us, and in the same time we've also been careful to say look, it can't just be ant. And so what we're also doing now is you look at james harden, for example. He's on his 10th signature shoe, and normally signature shoes continue. They get gradually less popular, whereas actually we've been working with him to say, actually, look, look, what we did with that, look how the design's transformed.
Speaker 2:And then that's allowed us and him to be maybe a bit more adventurous in terms of like, okay, his shoes are actually now performing even better. So that you've got to take, you've got to, you know, take the learnings, but also take the momentum and apply it to other parts of of the category as well. And then we've got damien lillard as well, so he's got his own shoe and we've just signed the best high school player in the us as well. So they've seen what we do with those players and gone. I want a part of that as well. So again, build, you know, make someone, make heaven. The sun shines, you know, keep moving.
Speaker 1:No great, um. You last point really you touched on predator there, so I'm reminiscing again, but we're talking about partnerships and how they're more constructed in the modern day. Yeah, interesting story about the predator. You go back in time, craig johnston, liverpool player, ex-liverpool player at the time, I think. The story goes that he was trying to think how could he get a better performing boot with a better touch, maybe how he could control the ball better or change the shape of a free kick, something like that, I think from memory on the news he was sticking table tennis bats on the front of his trainers and shoes and trialing them and things like that correct. And then at some point adidas got involved kind of a partnership, but in reverse someone deciding to try and invent something and then you come on board with it as well, which is probably different to some of the modern partnerships today, um, but still a massive success. I think most sold football boot or something, or it's up there that's why I read yeah, it's pretty big.
Speaker 2:Um uh, copa mondial, still the best-selling football boot of all time yeah, only because it's been out since 1978 yeah but, yeah, huge success. Um, it was actually a documentary that we did last year for the 30th anniversary of predator wow and that documentary charts the story that you talk about.
Speaker 2:So craig's in it and we're going back and we talk to him and reminisce and he's in his I think it's his garage or his loft where he's still got all the old samples of the tennis bat rudwer, and we look back at all the filming that he did. So we uh, we definitely celebrated the anniversary with him involved included, because he played a really big part in it. Um, I think when he brought it to us originally, I think when we went into our archives, I think in the 60s or 50s Adidas, they're all horsed somebody had been playing around with materials as well, but we weren't thinking about it at the time, like we'd gone away. So I think Craig brought it to us and we were like actually, yeah, we thought something similar. But actually, fair play, craig, you've brought it back and now's the time. So, yeah, now's the time. So, yeah, he deserves all the credit from that perspective. And, yeah, check out the documentary somewhere on YouTube, I'm sure Predator 1994.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, there's something else for someone else to have a listen to. Thanks for your time. Really appreciate it. Amazing to catch up with you after a good 25 years since we played football or tried to play football.
Speaker 2:Tried. Yeah, I stood still, I didn't do anything. So, yeah, you did a little running.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. No, I was in the middle of the part, wasn't I? Yeah, fantastic, I'm sure everyone listening took a lot from that. Thanks for having me Appreciate your time. Yeah, enjoyed it, thank you.
