Adidas primes global charge to take ‘Greatest Running’ shoe Boost to football
Adidas is extending its Boost running range to football in a global marketing push that will be the first time the two categories have been positioned alongside one another for the brand.
The campaign debuts later this year with stars Angel di Maria, Diego Costa, Luis Suarez, Lionel Messi, Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema turning out in the new Boost footwear. Creative will introduce the boots as built for “endless energy” that give people who play on astro turf the best of Adidas’ football technology as well as the energy return of Boost.
It is hoped the presence of some of the world’s elite players conveys a statement of intent for the street footwear category, which is being primed as a new growth driver within Adidas’ football offering. Adidas expects a significant portion of the growth to come from those players not just after performance, but also a good-looking shoe with the aim to extend football into a more lifestyle proposition.
The same mix of performance and lifestyle was used to unveil Boost to casual runners two years ago. While the company’s chief executive Herbert Hainer has admitted the range has yet to gain traction worldwide, its expansion to football and eventually basketball is expected to make inroads into markets such as the US.
With distribution streams for Boost taking shape, Adidas expects to snare a larger share of the market over the next 12 months. This is reflected by plans to ship 15 million pairs of shoes in 2015, almost double the 8 million last year.
The launch follows a marketing push for the latest addition to the Boost running range, the Ultra Boost. Launched in the US last month (22 January), athletes including Yohan Blake, David Villa, Sammy Watkins are supporting the new model.
Boost is regarded internally as the future of Adidas. Not only as a technology but also as a brand. The sportswear maker is touting the range as a gamechanger to retailers, promising further innovations from its innovative cushioning technology similarly to what rival Nike did with the Air Max in the 80s.
The push for Boost comes off the back of a 2014 that saw Adidas’ core brands - with the exception of golf - yield strong revenue growth. Despite Russia’s economic troubles knocking sales, the company’s revenues from sport performance rocketed 7 per cent year-on-year in the first nine months of 2014.
Later in the year, the business will launch a campaign, which Hainer has said will be the “most ambitious” brand campaign in the company’s history. The move supports Adidas’ efforts to carve a stronger retail offering for itself. Nearly two thirds of its sales are made through third-party retailers but the company is opening more of its own shops because they are more profitable.