MUMBAI: German sportswear giant adidas has for the first time consolidated its media planning and buying duties across the company’s flagship brands adidas and Reebok portfolio with WPP’s MediaCom.
The combined brief will be executed across all platforms with a focus on innovation aligned to the brand’s strategic business plan – ‘Creating the New’.
The result follows a competitive and multi-layered pitch process, with the global account size reported to be worth $300 million. Specific to India, the account size is in the region of Rs 200-250 million for both adidas and Reebok put together, according to estimates put out by Best Media Info.
The strategy for adidas has been concentrated on three strategic choices – Speed, Cities and Open Source. These have all been channelled through a core belief – “Through sport, we have the power to change lives”. This new brief will align to these focus areas with faster media implementation than ever before, a laser focus on the capital cities of culture and commerce as well as a world-class digital ecosystem, and then a continued drive behind an open source approach to fuel innovation.
The areas of responsibility for the agency teams across the world will include full funnel media planning, integrated media consultancy and buying, consumer insight and measurement.
The two hubs for the global business will be London for adidas and New York City for Reebok with MediaCom staff also positioned around key focus locations for the brands across the world, B&T reports.
Jocelyn Robiot, senior vice-president Marketing, adidas, said: “It is our mission ‘to be the best sports company in the world.’ To hit that mark, we need the right line-up of partners onside with us. Consumer-obsessed, digitally focused and always creating the new. This is the way we at adidas and Reebok operate. We are pleased to have found those same drivers in our new agency partner MediaCom. Through our partnership, we look forward to innovating ways of reaching and connecting to our consumers across the trend-leading cities whose influence on global culture is the key to unlocking desirability and demand.”
Melanie Boulden, VP of Marketing at Reebok, said: “After a vigorous pitch process, MediaCom stood out as an excellent strategic media partner for our brand. We feel that they are the right partner to help us achieve our goals and mission for 2020 and beyond. We are pleased to be working with them and look forward to kicking off our partnership.”
Toby Jenner, Worldwide COO, MediaCom: said, “We are delighted to have been selected by one of the world’s most ambitious and iconic brands as their partner. Our teams around the world can’t wait to get cracking. adidas is a business of great people and brands with enormous e-commerce opportunities moving forward. We’re looking forward to developing brilliantly creative and highly effective campaigns, which combine their brand heat and e-commerce, alongside their other agency partners.”
