Three sports brands wrapped the World Cup Puma is the real dark horse

Football matches are invisible wars, and the World Cup is an invisible world war. However, watching the World Cup in the past, it is not only the teams but also the different players in the players who compete with each other. Judging from this World Cup in Germany, Puma, the world’s third-largest sports brand manufacturer and Germany’s domestic brand, has finally fought a beautiful turnaround, breaking through the previous situation of Adidas and Nike.

Puma is the real dark horse

Puma's strategy this year is to “spread the net and focus on training.” A total of 12 teams were sponsored, including 5 African teams, as well as Italy, the Czech Republic, Paraguay, Poland, Switzerland, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Visible, Puma’s The investment is focused on Africa. As early as February 2 of this year, President Zeitz announced in an interview with the German "Economic Weekly" that this year's World Cup mission is to occupy the African market. The latest Puma ad is also featured by African players. They shouted in the movie: “We are proud of Africa.” At the end of last year, Puma also worked with MTV to search for endorsement songs for African football and Puma spokesperson Bailey participated in the advertisements. It has also been broadcast on MTV Europe and Africa. There are also the last three African Cup champions, dressed in Puma's jerseys. For insurance, the two teams in the last finals, Puma also gave all sponsorship.

People will ask why Puma wants to get this work in Africa? Because 4 years later, Africa will host the World Cup for the first time, and the host country is the richest country in South Africa on the African continent. It can be seen that Puma is a long-line fisherman. By then, Puma is expected to double its revenue. Zeitz also hopes to quadruple the sales in the African market within one to two years after the conclusion of the World Cup in South Africa. In fact, the Puma's revenue from the German World Cup has reached a new high: The most conservative statistics are that operating profit has increased from 300 million U.S. dollars to 350 million, and sales have also increased by 30% to 2.3 billion U.S. dollars. Zeitz emotionally said: "Africa football can make every fan intoxicated."

Also worth mentioning is that in countries other than African teams, Puma only sponsored a seed team, that is, Italy. It is not easy to grab Italy from Kappa, Italy's domestic brand, but Italy can't live up to expectations. It has ignited scandals and fears of being spurned by others. Even if it arrives in Germany, Lippi insists on keeping away from fans and shutting down training. Correspondingly reduce the chance of Puma's new contact with Italian fans. Until 2014, during this period, Puma will give the Italian Football Association a total of 11.5 million sponsorships. So for Fusarol, the managing director of Puma Italy, the biggest concern is not seeing returns. However, the news from Puma manufacturers is that the sales of Italian jerseys in the world are not affected by the scandals, and they have not risen. In the first half of this year, Blue Puma had already sold 100,000 pieces. After launching new models in March, it was not only the Italian countries like China and Japan and other "Hai Italian" Asian countries. Even football powers such as Argentina have rushed to buy. Frenzy.

Fussaro said: "We don't hide. There are so many things happening in Italian football. We really fear sales decline, but actually it's better than two years ago. At that time, we first launched the Blues in Europe. Commodities and attracted a lot of attention, now we just want to maintain this level, but did not expect more than 20% of the sales. The further the Italy goes in the World Cup, the longer our sales will be longer."

When Puma supplies to distributors, the number and name are not printed on the jersey. Therefore, there is no official statistics. Whose jersey is best sold. However, feedback from various distributors was that of Totti’s No. 10 favourite, followed by Tony’s No. 9, Piero’s No. 7, Gattuso’s No. 8 and Cannavaro’s No. 5. Fusaluo also revealed that the goalkeeper clothing endorsed by Bufeng is also very popular, even including gloves. It seems that people not only like the traditional blue, but also like Bordeaux wine-like red, and Bufeng is willing to bet on an ordinary fan. Who cares?

Puma's style is now combined with fashion, which has attracted the attention of some young European and American women. In addition, the 9 teams sponsored by Puma this time are designed in a large number of dark floral motifs using national symbols such as the icons of Cote d’Ivoire, the Togolese, the Ghanaian stars, the Tunisian eagle, the Czech lion, and the Swiss flag. Saudi Arabia's sword thorn palm tree. In addition, Puma's jersey for Italy is also very special: home jersey, full blue design, the team emblem on the chest, below is a striking PUMA pattern. The away jersey is mainly white, and the blue V-neck embroidered with the team emblem. The goalkeeper jersey is a long-sleeved design, and the initial style of the collar is similar to the visiting team jersey.

Adidas and Nike also pack wealthy

Compared to Puma, the same Adidas for Germany only sponsored six teams, but they are all popular teams, so the sales are guaranteed, such as Germany, Argentina, Spain and France. The remaining two are Japan and Trinidad. Dato'o and Tobago. The Adidas brand has always been synonymous with professionalism, efficiency, and simplicity, but from the company’s recently introduced product lines, such as +F50Tunit, they are also moving toward fashion and personalization, but only because of the big teams. There are many restrictions, and FIFA has established the jersey style rules many years ago, and the new 48-page rule that was added last year was more for big teams, so Adidas can't be fancy in design, so it looks like a Spanish jersey. It is still a red and yellow shirt. Adidas's jerseys manager Bend is also very helpless: "The teams we sponsor are mostly very traditional. Nigeria, which can play with flowers, has not been short-listed this year." The rest of Adidas' change is only to move the number on the front of the shirt from the middle to the right. Chest position so that the fans know who is running on the field, as well as in the sleeves of the shirt printed on the World Cup unique conference designated football logo, the new wavy pattern added to the shorts shirt. Nike is also faced with the same problem, so the difference with the old model can only be to place the foot emblem, which was originally placed under the collar of the jersey, in the middle part, and change it to the left side of the shirt chest to facilitate the player's traditional method. , sing the national anthem according to his left chest. Another is to design their own jersey number fonts for countries, changing the style of the past.

Nike more than Adidas sponsored two teams, Brazil, South Korea, the United States, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Croatia and Australia. Feeling, the concept of confrontation with Adidas that began in the 1994 World Cup in the United States has not changed. It is even more obvious by a few examples: Adidas sponsored the host Germany, Nike sponsored the five-star general in Brazil; Adidas lost the previous session. The World Cup champion Brazil, in turn, sponsored the previous championship France, while Nike sponsored the last European Cup champion Portugal; Adidas grabbed Asia in Japan, Nike chose South Korea. In addition, even teammates who are playing for the same country have to worry about choosing Adidas or Nike, such as Beckham and Rooney in England, Kaka and Ronaldinho in Brazil, Ruben and Van Nie in the Netherlands, France. Zidane and Henry and so on.

From the perspective of companies advertising the World Cup, Nike is full of firepower, 1.8 billion US dollars, far more than the sum of two German companies (Adidas is 1 billion US dollars, Puma is 220 million US dollars), Nike hopes to take this opportunity Beyond Adidas, it became the world's largest player in the football market. At the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, when Nike held a new jersey conference, the company’s spokesperson had said with confidence: “This conference shows our determination that our goal is to be football in the field and on the streets. Boss!"

Specifically how to implement it? Nike has always adhered to the strategy of “superstar + customer interaction”. It not only owns first-line stars such as Ronaldinho and Wayne Rooney, but has also promoted its “Joga Bonito” concept in the past six months. Today, Nike’s revenue from football products has grown from 40 million U.S. dollars a year ago to 1.5 billion U.S. dollars now. The latest market survey results show that Nike's global market share is 33%, only 2% less than Adidas.

Adidas is not to be outdone, not only moved its headquarters from Germany to Paris, but also recently successfully acquired Reebok for 2.2 billion pounds. In the face of this World Cup, Adidas Group CEO Heiner said recently that the company’s marketing team “cannot hope for better business opportunities”. Moreover, since the 1970 World Cup, Adidas has been the official sponsor of FIFA, providing official balls for the World Cup, providing equipment for referees, officials and staff, and therefore enjoying the use of FIFA in their products. The privilege of the World Cup logo, but FIFA also put forth words to "protect the interests of sponsors." Although Adidas-sponsored Greece, Nigeria, and China have failed to qualify in this World Cup, Adidas will monopolize all sporting goods billboards in the 12 World Cup stadiums, which can make up for the small number of sponsored teams. weakness. Earlier this year, Adidas renewed its contract with FIFA until 2014, which is one reason why they are looking forward to this summer. Considering that the relationship between Adidas and German football can be traced back to the years of Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller. Compared to Nike who didn't start with football products, they did have a huge "home advantage."

In addition to the above three giants, there are 4 shirt sponsors in this World Cup. British domestic brand Umbro recently renewed the contract with the FA until 2014. The World Cup also sponsored two teams including England and Sweden. Lotto also has two teams, Ukraine and Serbia and Montenegro, Joma sponsors Costa Rica, and Marrathon sponsors Ecuador.