Samenvatting

Adidas Originals is one of the sub-brands of the German based sports manufacturer company, adidas. It offers sports-inspired clothing, footwear and accessories that are targeting the young and active lifestyle consumers. For years being a lifestyle and fashion brand that is originally inspired by sports, adidas Originals product offering has always been geared more towards its male consumers; rather than to its female. In recent years, adidas Originals started to acknowledge the fact that in order to compete with the other sports-inspired clothing brands; it needed to revise some of its brand strategies; including its approach to women's fashion.

In 2009 adidas celebrated its 60 years' anniversary. To celebrate its rich history in lifestyle and sports, adidas invited all of its closest friends from athletes to recording artists and other entertainers to join its campaign that is set on a house party background. Still in this occasion, adidas Originals took this occasion to re-introduce the brand to the market for its female consumers. By continuing its partnership with Hip Hop artist Missy Elliot under the Respect M.E. collection, giving the French female graffiti artist FAFI her own capsule collection and making collaboration with London based label PPQ, adidas Originals has managed to give a wider variety of female products offering and has truly managed to reposition itself as a brand for the female consumers as well.

When it comes to adidas Originals' digital marketing strategy, 2009 was a big year for the brand too. The adidas Originals online presence underwent a major makeover. The brand first adopted the Owned, Earned and Bought media classification framework to be able to clearly distinctive its strategy for these three environments. Then the brand started its online presence makeover by retiring its old-fashioned flashy website in exchange for a blog-like, content management-driven website that not only supports various multimedia contents but is also easily updateable and exportable to be shared online by users.

The next makeover happened to adidas Originals' official Fan Page on Facebook. adidas Originals launched the industry breaking 'Your Area' tab on its Facebook Fan Page. Besides that, adidas Originals was committed to nurture and maintain its community of almost three million fans on Facebook. The same makeover also happened to its YouTube channel where it has became the brand's main destination for all branded video content. And with a photo recognition-powered mobile application coming, adidas Originals has added mobile to the list of its Owned digital platforms.

Given the difficult economic conditions in 2009, it has become a bigger brand mandate for every single brand marketing team across all categories to always think of commercial opportunities when developing any marketing tools that will touch the consumers. adidas Originals digital marketing initiatives were no exception. Now the big question is, given all the opportunities that adidas Originals Owned digital platforms already have after the major structural reform, does the content that adidas Originals put up on their Owned digital platforms reflects the brand's new strategy for its female consumers and does it ensure maximum engagement and conversion by the female consumers?

To be able to have a successful online campaign in all three Owned, Bought and Earned space, it is important for brands like adidas Originals to get everything right on their Owned digital platforms first, as those platforms will be the final destination of consumers and hopefully be the platforms where the conversion of consumers to shoppers happen.