Getting ziggy with it

Reebok’s ad campaign for its new shoe shows an animated world energised by the shoe’s technology

What do you do when you run out of steam while following your daily fitness regimen or running to get in shape? Perhaps you gulp an energy drink to pump yourself up and run or train harder. Now, Reebok has launched a new shoe which it touts as ‘the energy drink for your feet’. What? Well, yes. Like an energy drink, the company claims, the new shoe, called ZigTech, conserves and returns energy to the athlete so that he can run or train longer and harder.

Reebok says ZigTech is the brand’s most technically-advanced running and training shoe till date, and it has been rolled out globally recently. The heart of the shoe is its unique zigzag-shaped outsole (thus ZigTech) which, Reebok claims, absorbs the impact of heel strike and sends a wave of energy along the length of the shoe to help propel the athlete forward with each step. Thus, the athlete’s muscles do less, and he can do more.

The launch is a part of Reebok’s strategy to keep coming up with innovative products to create new markets and have a first-mover advantage. A year ago, Reebok saw gaps in the women shoe market and rolled out EasyTone, which it pitched as a shoe that tones the leg and butt muscles. EasyTone was an instant hit. Reebok is now betting big on ZigTech and plans to go hammer and tongs with its promotions.

Zig world
Recently, it rolled out two television commercials featuring cricketers Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Yuvraj Singh in an animated world of sports and fun. The first commercial shows an energetic yellow line that transforms from the zigzag pattern of the shoe’s sole into Dhoni running, reshapes into a busy street, road with cars, buses and auto rickshaws. It shows Dhoni running through and climbing over to jump on a motorcycle and riding it to reach a field where he bats hard to hit coconuts thrown at him. The animation morphs into an energy drink and then again to the zigzag pattern of the sole, which finally turns real with Dhoni introducing the shoe, followed by the tagline: “The energy drink for your feet”. The second commercial shows Yuvraj Singh running through another animated world, this time created with red lines. Singh jumps on a rope swing, dodges punching bags, and climbs up walls and through tunnels, all in a day of training — before driving off in a convertible.

The ads play up how the ZigTech shoe energises the athletes to train harder and faster. Reebok India Director (sales and marketing) Sajid Shamim says: “The ads essentially leverage the zigzag sole — the iconic visual element in the product — and show a world of animation energised by the new technology. While both Dhoni and Singh go through their training, each regimen includes elements preferred by the players. Dhoni, for instance, rides a bike and bats hard. Singh, on the other hand, follows a more rigorous, gym-like regimen, and much like him speeds off in a convertible.”

Shamim says the commercials serve two objectives: One, to convey that ZigTech is a high-end technology shoe. “Such fast-paced line animation brings out the association with technology quite convincingly,” he says. And two, to bring out Reebok’s brand values; that it is a bold, fun and provocative brand. “That’s what ZigTech is all about — a high-end technology shoe with loads of fun.”

Global campaign
The ad has been created by Reebok’s global agency, DDB Berlin. In fact, Reebok’s campaign for ZigTech is a global one. DDB Berlin has used the same concept and theme to create similar ads for many countries the world over. The US ads, for instance, feature American football star Peyton Manning and ice hockey player Sidney Crosby, while the UK one features Formula One racing driver Lewis Hamilton. “It is essentially a global campaign where Reebok in every country has been talking to its local agencies and drawing out what it wants from the proposition,” says Shamim. The brief from Reebok to DDB Berlin, he says, was to capture the technology and fun elements associated with the shoe as well as to bring alive the elements from the lives and personalities of the players on the screen.

Reebok’s media plan for the ZigTech campaign is to go strong on TV compared to print and outdoor when it comes to the traditional media, backed up by an equally strong focus on digital or the Internet. On TV, the campaign will run for 45 days, with an initial burst of 350 spots a day on channels with high viewership in different genres — general entertainment (popular programmes such as Kaun Banega Crorepati, Big Boss and the likes), info-entertainment channels like Discovery and Nat Geo, and so on. Reebok says for the first time it is also focusing on some of the strong regional channels in the South such as Sun and Vijay. “Regional channels these days have very strong penetration, and to build a national appeal for the brand one certainly needs to go regional,” says Shamim.

Reebok is highly active on the digital medium too. While it has ZigTech ads popping up on most of the popular websites, it is quite aggressive on social media. Reebok India’s Facebook page has a ZigTech interactive microsite which tells the user everything about the technology and its benefits. Besides it features videos, online games, contests, tools to map jogs, discount vouchers, wallpapers, downloads and so on. In the first two days of the launch of the ZigTech commercial and the Facebook microsite, the number of subscribers to the Reebok India Facebook page had gone up by 200,000.