Introduction

In the recent competitive and turbulent business environment, having a product, perhaps a high quality product is no longer sufficient to achieve significant competitive advantage in the marketplace. Corporation are entering a stage of fierce competition whereby the competition extend beyond the context of quality and attractive products, but also on how the corporations convey the attractiveness of their products to the marketplace (Gronroos, 2004). Thus, marketing communication strategies are becoming more important in the new economy – in which corporations are becoming more dependent on their reputation and brand equity to make a real difference in the marketplace.

The athletic shoe industry is a good example on how the marketing communication strategies are shaping the success or failure of a company. There are many widely popular brand names in the industry, among them: Nike, Adidas, Puma, Reebok, New Balance, Asics and many others. In the industry, it is hard to differentiate which products have the best quality, but the market performances of these brands in the marketplace differ significantly. It is not hard to understand the differences when we look at the marketing communication strategies of these companies. In the following section, the marketing communication strategies and mix between the two most famous athletic shoe brand, namely Adidas and Nike, will be analyzed and compared.

Literature Review

Introduction of Marketing Communication

Marketing communication is often referred to the way by which a firm informs, remind or educate the consumers, either consciously or unconsciously about the products the company is offering. Marketing communication is important because it serves as the voice of the brand and the products, while at the similar time establish a dialogue with the customers indirectly. Marketing communication can often be used to demonstrate the usage of a product, the advantages and benefits offered, and often to associate the brands to certain criteria the marketer plan for (Caemmerer, 2009).

Importance of Marketing Communication Strategies/ Mix

The importance and positive effects from effective marketing communication strategies is widely accepted and recognized. Essentially, people understand the power of branding – and many successful entrepreneurs and business persons have been stressing that your reputation is more important than your profit – in the long run. It is the reputation that can ensure continuous growth and sustainability in terms of financial profitability for any organization in the market place. In fact, it is not unreasonable to mention that it is the branding that can lead an organization to achieve competitive advantages in the marketplace. With a strong brand name, such a competitive advantage is hardly duplicated by competitors. This is often equal to a higher margin or above average price premium a company can charge on its products or services offerings (Gronroos, 2004).

The rise and increasingly importance of marketing communication strategies cannot be denied, or should not be taken for granted by marketers. The emerging and changes in business environment and technological advances, particularly on the field of information and communication technologies, has bring much changes to how the consumers can obtain immediate and relevant information about products or services offered in a marketplace. The various widely available communication channels are indeed pressing the companies in various industries to focus on its communication mix – to ensure that constant and proper messages are delivered to the society (Gronroos, 2004). Not only that, the increasing sophistication of consumers knowledge and every demanding consumers’ attitudes and preferences are also pressing the company to carefully plan its marketing communication strategies – as any misunderstanding can cause great consumers dissatisfaction – where in such a high speed society, the proliferation of bad news regarding any company will definitely undesirable. Apart from these, there are also views that companies have been discovering that the corporate communication efforts should not only target to the customers or the particular market segment the company is serving; rather, their target audience include other stakeholders group as well. This is consistent with the assertion that stakeholders’ analysis and framework is the better management philosophy to be followed by an organization, instead of purely focusing on a customer-oriented strategy (Schultz, 1997).

Marketing Communication Strategies

Developing effective communication strategy usually involves eight steps. Firstly, it is important to identify the exact target audience. Secondly, the marketer must determine the communication objectives. Thirdly, the contents of the communication must be designed. Next, the communication channels are selected. Besides, the budget for the communication program should also be determined. The communication mixes are to be considered properly. After the communication program is implemented, it is crucial for the marketer to measure the communication results (Schultz, 1997).

There are six major modes of communication to the customers – and they are often referred to as the marketing communication mix. The six major modes of communication include: advertising; sales promotion; events and experiences; public relations and publicity; direct marketing; and personal selling. All of these methods have their respective advantages and disadvantages. It is important for the marketer to decide on the best communication mode to be used to effectively reach and influence the consumers. Psychologically speaking, to convey their messages effectively, marketers should encode their messages in a manner that fully consider how the target audience will decode and absorb the messages. Apart from that, the marketers must also transmit the messages through effective media that able to reach the target audiences while at the same time develop feedback channels from the customers to investigate the customers’ response to the messages (Schultz, 1997).

Case Study: Adidas vs. Nike

Company Background

Adidas

Adidas was founded by a German’s sports apparel expert, Adi Dassler in the 1920s. The company started off with a production of 50 handmade shoes per day. These shoes were meant for running and training in the early days. Today, the company is a famous sports-related apparel company, where the brand name can be seen from all regions around the globe. The company expanded its product range to not only sport shoes, but also other sports goods such as sport shirts, utilities, add-ons, and sporting equipments (Cassidy, 2006).

Nike

Nike is a well-known company, where it require little introduction in this section. In fact, Nike is most famous associated with the extraordinary trendy, stylish and powerful sport shoes produced by the company. Nonetheless, apart from delivering a pair of remarkable sports shoes to the marketplace, Nike also provides various value-added features with its other products. In fact, in the industry, the logo and brand of Nike is one of the most famous and top ten valuable brands in the world (Fong, 2008).

Marketing Communication Strategies of Adidas vs. Nike

Marketing communication strategies of Adidas. Adidas is a company actively engaged in successful marketing communication campaigns to promote the company products. In the following paragraphs, the various marketing communication strategies practices by Adidas are discussed.

Partnership with other sport associations. Recently, NBA and Adidas have just joined forces to form a ‘Brotherhood’. Subsequently, the NBA came up with the well-known slogan called “Basketball is a Brotherhood”. In the partnership, Adidas is responsible for providing sponsorships to NBA. There are two possible reasons for such a sponsorship event. Firstly, by sponsoring or partnering with sport associations, Adidas able to create effective advertising campaign and enhance the publicity of the brand name. Secondly, by tapping into the famous event such as the NBA basketball competition, the company will be able to craft effective publicity campaigns throughout the world. Nonetheless, it should be mentioned that the partnership of Adidas with NBA is not an isolate event. In fact, Adidas most important marketing communication breakthrough started in 1972, by active promotion of global sporting events, especially for the Olympics games. Such promotional events significantly enhance the branding effects for the company, whereby the company is made known to many people whom watched the Olympics game around the world (Kang, 2007; Fong, 2008).

Employing endorsement strategies on sport events to create ‘Adidas’ brand awareness among consumers. In order to create brand awareness, Adidas has been focusing on sponsorship of teams and events. As we have discussed in paragraphs above, Adidas has been sponsoring events such as NBA and Olympics games. This enables them to create brand awareness from the mass media. Besides, it is also worthy to point out that the one of the famous sport events sponsored and made famous by Adidas is the Adidas Streetball 3 on 3 Challenge. The event started out in Berlin, German and soon spread very fast to all other corners around the world. This is another success stories in which Adidas able to capitalize on sponsoring sport events to make great brand presence and building brand equity around the globe (Harverson, 1998).

Huge amount of resources are spent on advertising. The competition between Adidas and Nike is stiff. It is a well-known fact that Nike has been spending a lot of resources on advertisement and related activities. As such, Adidas has to face the challenges and spent at least some meaningful amount on advertising to ensure that the brand presence of Adidas is not dominated by Nike. The advertisement campaigns created by Adidas is having a stronger focus on TV and other specialized events, such as to constantly communicate the company innovation and creative technologies with big success stories such as top athletes like Mohammad Ali and Emil Zatopek. The many advertisement campaigns launched by Adidas carry a meaning such as: there is nothing between you and success, and to earn the success, you just have to exceed your expectations and limitations (Holmes, 2006).

Marketing communication strategies of Nike. Nike is in fact the market leader in the sports apparel, equipments and tools industry. The brand name of Nike is often rated as one of the top most valuable brand in the business community. The success achieved by Nike is not without reasons. Purely based on the fact that Nike does no longer own any manufacturing arms for shoes or apparel production purposes, it is safe to say that the company able to achieve the market leader position in the industry not by possessing competitive edge in the quality of the products, but rather by the marketing communication strategies and mix that enable the company to build strong brand name around the globe. In the following section, the various marketing communication strategies employed by Nike is discussed.

Employing endorsement strategies on well-know individuals to create ‘Adidas’ brand awareness among consumers. Similar to the case in Adidas, Nike is also actively engaging in endorsement strategies to create brand awareness among the consumers. However, it is observed that Nike has a slightly different endorsement strategy. Nike is focusing to sponsors or associates the brand with top performing athletes such as Michael Jordon and Tiger Woods, and actively craft a marketing communication mix that will lead the consumers to perceive that Nike is strongly related to the success stories of these top performing athletes (Holmes, 2006).

Aggressive advertising to enhance brand presence for the company. As a market leader, Nike advertising strategy is to create dominant position in the mass media. For example, in US and Europe, Nike advertising strategies is to create brand name presence in several trend setting cities – with many oversized billboards and murals on buildings. Consistent with the endorsement strategies, the oversized billboards and murals are painted with those top performing athletes sponsored by Nike (Fong, 2006).

Use of flag ship stores to penetrate the market. One of the Nike strategies is to develop flagship stores all around the world. The company started off with this strategy in few big cities and sonly expand the base to all other parts of the world. This indirectly informs the consumers that the company is very successful and the products sold by the companies are widely accepted by athletes (Ford, 2006).

Creation of marketing communication campaign and mix to associate the brand name with success. It is very common to observe that the consumers of Nike brand often associate the brand with concepts such as lifestyle, sports, attitudes and success. This is made possible with effective Nike campaign such as the tagline of ‘Just Do It’ and the spokesman of Nike such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Thus, successful association of the company logo with concepts such as success, performance, achievement and lifestyle is one of the critical success factors of the Nike brand (Holmes, 2006).

Analysis of the Marketing Communication Mix of Adidas vs. Nike

From the discussions above, we can observe that both Nike and Adidas have pretty similar marketing communication strategies and mix. Both of the companies engage heavily in advertising media, covert advertising, endorsement program, television commercials, and association of the brand with celebrities and sport events as well as sponsoring of sport athletes. Both of the companies are successful, and this can be seen from the domination of market shares by both the giant companies in the sport apparels and equipment industry. It is observed that both of the companies, however, are adjusting and copying each others’ marketing communication strategies, in an indirect manner. In fact, it is reasonable to conclude that both of the companies are benchmarking each other brand building strategies, techniques and programs. Many similarities in the endorsement program can be found between the two companies. However, the distinctive difference is how the companies executed the endorsement strategies. Adidas tend to endorse sport events and Nike tends to utilize the top performing athletes to associate its brand with excellent, performance, lifestyle, and success. Nonetheless, at the surface and macro level, it cannot be denied that both the companies are actually aiming at the same target audience, where the formulation of the marketing communication strategies may be similar and same from the consumers’ perspectives. However, at least for the moment, Nike marketing communication strategies is observed to be more successful, due to the correct association of the brand name to the deep desire of the end users. Adidas is concentrating on having an image to urge the consumers to win over self-attitudes, while Nike tend to stand out as it associate itself with winning over others’ attitude. Not only that, the endorsement program by Adidas may be too broad, where apparently, the association with top performer in sports by Nike is more effective (Harverson, 1998). People tend to seek a sense of performance, success, lifestyle and an attitude to win over others. That is why Nike is the market leader and staying there for such a long time. Eventually, ‘Just Do It’ becomes ‘Just Buy Nike’ because deep down in the customers’ heart, they too, want to be a performer and be famous and popular such as Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods.

Conclusion

Marketing communication strategies is a very important marketing element in the competitive business worlds. Having good quality product is no longer sufficient or useful, as it is how the end users perceive the brand of a product that is more important. In the case study presented above, both Nike and Adidas, famous and reputable companies are being used to analyze the importance, impacts and influences of marketing communication strategies and mix. It is discovered that the contents and the strategies of marketing communication can be the deciding factors in affecting the consumers’ behaviors and in turn will determine the market share of the company. In our case, Nike remains as the market leader while Adidas can only be the market follower around the globe. Nike marketing communication strategies simply make Adidas’s marketing communication to become irrelevant and causing Adidas to lose out in the competitive market.

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