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Free topic post: Adidas

December 13, 2012 aitzibego Leave a comment

ADIDAS

Nowadays Adidas is a brand that represents competence in all sectors of sport around the globe. The founder of Adidas was called Adolf Dassler and with a simple and brilliant idea he made his sport brand one of the most valued ones. Adi Dassler’s main objective was to provide every athlete the best possible equipment. It all began in the year 1920 when Adi Dassler made his first shoes using some poor materials which were still available after the First World War. In 1949 Adi Dassler decided to register Adidas in the commercial register in Germany. The first official name of the company, back then, was “Adolf Dassler Adidas Sportschunhfabrik”. After a period of 70 years the Dassler family turned their small company into a huge corporation.

Adi Dassler

The Adidas Group has over 42.000 employees worldwide, with more than 3.000 employees working at the headquarters in Germany. Between those employees in Germany, we find designers, product developers, experts on biomechanics and experts on technological material. It is here where Adidas maintains the only shoes production facility. The distribution of Adidas is nowadays grouped in four regions: Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America. Today, the Adidas brand is Europe’s biggest supplier on sport footwear.

Adidas breakthrough came when Germany won the Soccer World Cup in 1954. In the final against Hungary, the German team was wearing boots screw-in-studs by Adidas. At this time Adi Dassler started promoting his products in order to make the public aware of his innovations. He started then using well known athletes for advertising his products. Adidas marketing communication efforts are focused to achieve three pillars: energize, globalize and contemporize. This brand has used several advertising media to promote its products in the marketplace. This different advertising media are: print media advertisement, cover advertising, infomercials, online advertisements, public transport advertisements, celebrity advertisements etc.

Here we have an example of the last one, where celebrities such as Leo Messi appear. The ad translates humor and freshness and as a result we have an advertising campaign that clearly communicates Adidas street relevancy.

Adidas has also made use of social networks in order to promote its products and as an example we have its own YouTube channel, where they let us know about all their innovations. It also has an Adidas Twitter account for Spanish customers (@ adidas_ES), where they launch information about new products, events, promotions, and everything related to Adidas clubs. Furthermore, it even has a Facebook account with over 20,000,000 people liking it. In its official webpage we find everything that we would like to know about the German brand; promotions, news, developments etc.

According to the logo of Adidas, at the very beginning Adi designed the 3-Stripes mark which some Adidas sport shoes still have on them. His aim was to create a symbol that could be immediately recognized when using it in athletic competitions.

Adidas tree stripes model

Later in the late 60s he decided to create a new identification for the Adidas brand. So, in 1971, the Treefoil was born, out of more than 100 ideas. It still had on it the previous 3-Stripes design.

Adidas Treefoil

In 1998, the merger between Salomon and Adidas originated a new logo. This new Logo incorporated the two typical colors of both brands: blue for Adidas and red for Salomon.

Mixed logo between Adidas an Salomon

Adi Dassler died in 1978, at the age of 78. His name and developments will definitely continue helping athletes in their efforts to push themselves to the limit. After his dead, his son Horst Dassler took charge of running the company and in 1987 it was transformed into a corporation. Today, the Adidas product range extends from footwear and apparel to accessories for all type of sports, being the priority ones: football, running, basketball and training.

To sum up we could say that Adidas went from being a very small company to be one of the best known corporations worldwide. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of the founder of this German brand, he achieved his goal of bringing athletes their needed sport equipment. But maybe, this success would not have been the same if the corporation had not been released by advertising and social networks. Since, nowadays one of the most direct ways to reach consumers is through Internet and social networking.

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