Reebok — The Classic Leather Legacy- By LoADing
We are LoADing, a creative team formed for the needs of the Ad & PR Lab in the Department of Communication, Media & Culture at Panteion University. Our team consists of 8 members, all sharing the passion for the marketing and advertising world.
During the spring semester of our first year in the Ad & PR Lab, we participated in the Strategy and Social Media module, in which we were introduced to the concept of approaching strategically and tactically an advertising/marketing campaign. Our experience concluded with a final project, assigned by Reebok, the case study for which we present below.
Reebok Case Study
Mr. Alexandros Klonaris, Senior Manager of South East Europe for Reebok Communications, introduced us to the insights of Reebok’s communication and managing strategies and gave us the brief of our case study.
The main task of the Reebok Challenge was to build a communication strategy in order to promote the re-launch of the Classic Leather Legacy, Reebok’s new pair of shoes that introduces the world to the new fashion era: the athleisure era. The Classic Leather Legacy was originally launched in 1983 and it is making its comeback 37 years later. Our task was to define a holistic communication strategy for the relaunch, identify influencers and choose the suitable people to represent and promote the shoe in social media, propose digital partnerships and spit the available budget of 300K.
In order to create a successful communication strategy, we first had to identify our target audience through research. We discovered that Generation Z identify more with ordinary people, the so-called micro-influencers, rather than celebrities, since they can relate with them more easily. They deeply care about social and political issues and they choose to support brands that use their power and influence to spread important and meaningful messages.
After gathering all the important information about the characteristics, consuming and communication habits of our target audience,we analysed all the key findings and synthesized these insights in order to build a meaningful and successful strategic plan. During our research, we noticed a big problem of modern times that mostly concerns the youth: how people’s style is mostly defined by the trends and fashion of each era and not leaving enough space for each one of us to freely express ourselves and be diverse. So the next important step was to set the goals of our campaign. Our three main goals were to raise the awareness of our target audience in appealing ways, make them familiar with the Reebok values and make them consider buying from our brand.
To achieve all the above, we built our strategy our our big main message as it appears in the manifesto we wrote: “Fashion trends have been restrictive throughout the history of style. It’s about time to break the rules. Classic lives forever — Our legacy is the proof”. The main concept we worked on was the idea of skipping evanescent trends while staying unique and classic. Moreover, in order to support our message visually, we got inspired by the shoes’ 80s aesthetic and we chose to highlight its timeless classiness through the years.
The four stages.
Our communication strategy had four big stages and every stage included different channels and media and people involved. The first stage of the strategy was the teasing. Teasing posts are posted on social media announcing that something is coming soon and creating hype for the upcoming release. Moving on to step two: The product announcement. We reveal the Classic Leather Legacy and give our audience a clear look of the design from many different angles. Next, our influencers announce the big Tik Tok challenge. Our influencers will use the unique filters we created exclusively for the launch and will invite people to join the huge challenge. Lastly, our influencers will be given the Classic Leather Legacy before the launch date and they will generate content of their preference for social media, in order to make the new shoe popular and lead traffic back to Reebok official accounts.
Next step in our strategy was to find influential people, suitable enough for promoting our product and appealing to our target audience and potential buyers. We chose nine very different and diverse people with one specific thing in common: leaving behind a legacy on their fields. Finally, a press release and supportive content will be uploaded on social media platforms, aiming to create a good reputation for our brand and legitimize our brand’s core values.
Moving on to the third stage and the official product release. This step is all about the promotion of the shoe in the market. We will modify the content to be distributed on already activated media, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube but also the influencers in order to make clear and loud that the shoe is now available. Furthermore, we will activate Press Ads, email newsletter marketing and in-store installations as Gen Z prefers to buy and get information about new products in physical stores.
Moreover, we had to detect the perfect digital partnerships and decided to partner up with Vice and the “Sounds Greek” web series to relate the product with a concept that matches our messaging.
Last but not least, stage four and final, was about giving a last boost to the shoe and keeping it in the spotlight by creating a big online event-cahoots platform, based on an aesthetic inspired by the 80s’ countryside american fair.
Lastly, we suggested the media investment split, as you can see it in the following slide.
You can find our presentation here:
Highlights, Insights, Challenges and Learning Outcomes of the semester.
Strategy & Social Media Lab Journey
As our second semester begins and the CoVid19 pandemic is spreading around the world, including our country, universities and schools were closed and the online courses had just begun. Taking into account how interactive the AD&PRLab sessions usually are, working in teams behind a computer screen was quite the challenge. However, as it appears from the results, all parts involved were more than willing to adjust in the new circumstances and help AD&PRLab online courses be as effective as they could possibly be.
In our first online session, we met Lina Kiriakou, coordinator of the Strategy and Social Media Lab, who introduced us to the concept of strategy & tactics and its importance for achieving goals, not only advertising-wise, but in any discipline. What was made clear to us from the very beginning, was the difference between two terms: strategy and tactics. Strategy is a higher-level plan to achieve long-term goals, and tactics are the smaller steps followed to achieve them. Later on we talked about how the digital advancements have changed the ways of consuming information and products, creating a dynamic and non-linear experience economy. To deeply understand these notions, we were assigned to analyze a brand’s/product’s strategy and the tactics followed to achieve.
In our next session, we talked about design, as a way of providing our clients with solutions. More specifically we analyzed several design thinking methods, such as the CX (Customer Experience) and the UX (User Experience) and how these can provide for delivering better results. The importance of asking clients about their desires and needs was highlighted, when it comes to creating innovative solutions.
Delving into the notion of design thinking, we were explained how digital advancements and crisis situations drive transformation, puting the human factor on the spotlight and how communications play a vital role in every aspect of that process. This session ultimately concluded to behavioral economics, the knowledge driven from that scientific field and the ways to utilize it.
In order to get a better understanding of the way behaviorism works, we participated in the Irrational Game by Dan Ariely, in which we were asked to guess the behavior people would follow in several given situations.
In the 4th session of the lab, our first guest speakers Dr. Panagiotis Zaharias and Antonis Birmpas , founders of the UX Prodigy, who showed us a way to illustrate the customer’s decision-making process: the Customer Journey Map. Furthermore, we analyzed the importance of empathy in the design process, and we were introduced to the framework of Empathy Mapping. At the end of the session, all of the Ad&PR Lab students created collectively an Empathy map, which you can see below:
Contextual Design was the next chapter in our Lab. Giorgos Gavriil as our new guest explained further to us how to use empathy for Product Design purposes and how to transcribe our vision into Storyboards and then utilize it for User Environment Design. The key takeaway was the importance of research about our potential users and target groups. To put our recently-acquired knowledge into practice, we got our hands on Spotify, making a case-study about it. More specifically we explored ways to make the online streaming platform more social. You can find our work on the link below:
Moving on, we met Gerasimos Katevatis, Executive Creative Director of TDG, who explained the difference between a social media user and a professional in communications, in a world that these lines are blurred.
In our last session in Strategy Social Media Lab our last guest Giannis Stoumpos, introduced us to the concept of Programmatic Advertising, providing us with useful insights about working successfully and performing well as future employees in the stages of product development, sales and advertising. To gain a better understanding of this process, we looked into the common ground between McDonalds’ and Netflix advertising strategies.
So after this challenging semester, these numerous collaborations and assignments we are confident to say that we got wiser and more prepared to face the challenges of the real work environment. We are grateful to our teachers and mentors and we would not have it any other way. Till next year we will keep on LoADing ideas…
Team: Panagiotis Theofanopoulos, Giannis Papalambrou, Zelia Makri , Athina Manolaki, Maria Drasioudi, Aphroditepht, Christina Tsakona and Angelika Hazizi
Coordinators: Betty Tsakarestou and Lina Kiriakou
