Sports and lifestyle brand Puma is hung-ho about the worldwide web and it thinks online promotions is a sureshot way to connect with the Indian youth. Just recently, it went on twitter inviting users to throw virtual pies at English cricketer Kevin Pieterson. This is part of its campaign designed around brand ambassador Yuvraj Singh which uses the number 12 in interesting ways.
The cricketer is the face of the brand’s #Love 12 campaign, which seeks to engage customers online and was created specially to launch him as the endorser. “Yuvraj was born on December 12, wears jersey number 12, lives in Sector 12 (or a number that adds up to 12)... so 12 is his lucky number,” says Rajiv Mehta, managing director, Puma India. “The idea is to do something fun and creative on the 12th of every month... may be something charitable,” he adds. The company had the Twitter campaign on November 12. As part of the campaign Puma distributed pies among the under-privileged in Mumbai and Bangalore. For December 12, Yuvraj’s birthday, a fan video was created in which people could be seen wishing him.
This is not the first time the company has taken the online route for promotion. In August last year, the company called out to Mumbaikars to come up with innovative designs for flip-flops, as part of their Pimp Your Sole campaign. Over a 100 artists had come up with unique designs that were judged by people on Puma’s Facebook page. The most voted designs were used on limited edition flip-flops and launched in May 2011.
More recently, there was the Rocket Race contest on Facebook that involved playing a game to win tickets to the inaugural F1 Grand Prix held in October 2011 in Noida. And the list goes on.
The crux of Puma’s communication strategy includes being different, being humorous, and engaging the consumer. Unlike, say, Nike that has often set new benchmarks with its advertising, Puma has never had a high-profile mass-media campaign in India. “That’s because we believe our target consumer is different from Nike. We do advertise, but only on music and lifestyle channels,” admits Mehta. “We are mostly targeting the 16-28 years age group. Most of these people were born in an era when even the compact disk was obsolete. They live online, they are very active on social networks and their idea of a conversation is chatting online. So we decided to engage them in a different way; hence our focus is purely on social media,” he adds.
The choice of the ambassador, Mehta says, ties in with its overall communication strategy. “Puma is about fashion, having fun and not being too serious. Yuvraj is good at his game, stylish, has a sense of humour and is a nice person. He believes in having fun both on and off the field. While there are many good cricketers around, Yuvraj suits Puma the best,” Mehta says.
The importance of digital media for the company can be gauged from the fact that around 40 per cent of its ad spend goes into that. “Providing experiential on-ground brand touch points to the consumer has been at the core of our marketing not just in India but globally,” says Mehta, talking about the accent on below-the-line activities. He adds, “Puma has its roots in sport and we will continue to reinforce our associations with sports.”
The German company, headquartered in Herzogenaurach, was started in 1948 and entered India in 2005. Since then, it has expanded steadily and the number of Puma exclusive stores in India stands at 190, with plans to add around a 100 new stores in a year. The market for sportswear and accessories in India is about Rs 8,000-Rs 8,500 crore. In terms of market share, Reebok and Adidas form about 65 per cent of the branded sportswear and accessories market in India (valued at about Rs 3,500 crore), followed by Puma at 20 per cent and Nike at 15. The unorganised segment stands at around Rs 5,000 crore.
