New Balance'S Ambition Finally Extended To The Comprehensive Sports Field.

In the 751D Park fashion design Plaza in Beijing, New Balance announced the adjustment of its global brand strategy.

It has established a new slogan "Always in Beta", released a new advertisement, and launched a series of new running shoes called "Vazee gale".

Aiming at positioning the top three of sports brand world, let New Balance decide to become high-profile.

From the new advertising Storm (storm) created by advertising agency Arnold Worldwide for New Balance, 17 sports stars were invited to endorse the brand.

The movie tells a story about a female runner who is about to give up. Suddenly there is a storm in front of him. After the storm, the world champion Jenny Simpson and the triathlon world champion Sebastian Klenle, the leader of the sports field such as Welsh young captain Aaron Ramsey and so on, are showing off skills.

After the storm, Always in Beta appeared on the screen.

This sentence is like New Balance said to himself.

In recent years, New Balance has been constantly adjusting its direction in the fierce sports brand market. Instead of signing the athlete's style, it has sponsored 78 top athletes in various fields around the world.

"The market is constantly changing, so our market strategy also needs to change.

Just like "Always in Beta", which means "always in progress", we need to constantly promote and innovate, and look for different cooperation points in different markets to strengthen the emotional ties between brands and people.

Hilary Keates, director of global marketing and brand management at New Balance, told the interface reporter.

In the past, New Balance was used to low key.

Five or six years ago, it was the pure athletic shoe manufacturer who took the elite line, positioning adults, rarely advertising, nor signing with any athlete.

In the United States, President Obama and former premier Wen Jiabao in China rely on politicians, celebrities and Chaozhou people. New Balance plays a brand of "opinion leader".

This is called KOL (Key Opinion Leader) strategy, although New Balance, known as "American president shoes", has reserved seats for KOL at the press conference.

But after that day, the overall situation has changed.

"We are ready to meet new challenges, from jogging to comprehensive sports development, and strive to enter the ranks of the world's three major sports brands."

"Athletes are the core of the strategy," Darren Tucker, vice president of New Balance Asia Pacific, said.

Obviously, the top three except themselves, the other two are Nike and Adidas.

From the perspective of women, New Balance is also eyeing female consumers.

In order to better conform to women's consumption habits, New Balance also takes into account fashion in product design.

The Vazee gale running shoes released on that day have 3 models. In addition to the first Vazee Pace speed up running shoes, the top sports professional running shoes are equipped with lower Vazee Rush and Coast series, all of which are designed to achieve balance between appearance and function.

"We combine the cool lifestyle with fashion to achieve fashion appeal, as we all know that we seize the future of brand development by seizing women."

New Balance, Danny Orr, senior product manager of global running category.

The conference site was selected in the workshop surrounded by China Fashion Association, fashion designer Guo Pei studio and fashion bazaar magazine.

Besides paying more attention to women, the football market has become the battleground of the top three seats of sports brand.

After New Balance announced its sponsorship of Liverpool and plans to double its revenue from soccer products to US $6 billion in the next five years, New Balance held two new soccer game boots Visaro and Furon in Shanghai at the end of 6, and officially announced its entry into the Chinese football market.

The decision is not just about keeping the consistency of global marketing strategy.

"We have 109 years of experience in running shoes, and we believe that we can also provide good football players.

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This is also in line with the wishes of Chinese consumers, because the football market here is booming.

Zhang Hongwen, President of New Balance China, told the interface reporter.

According to Tucker, the data collected by the company are enough to prove the potential of China's football market. "Children who are playing football around the age of 24 are looking for new brands and football can not fail."

This means that New Balance must give up the product line of its flagship adults and turn to younger groups.

In fact, it is doing this.

The new New Balance divides consumers into three parts: athletes and daily sports enthusiasts, 14-19 year old sports enthusiasts, and 24 year old -34 years old social urban white-collar workers.

Do you think New Balance is more and more like Nike and Adidas?

But New Balance does not expect to go beyond them. It wants to do third.

"The top two have their own problems, such as Adidas, although the brand and operation are very good, but the state is not as good as before, it is in the stage of adjusting its strategy."

Tucker said, "in fact, similar to the scale of New Balance, there are similar brands with similar market segmentation, but they are mistaken in some important overseas markets, and our goal is to compare them first."

Presumably one of the competitors in Tucker should be.

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The brand is now seen as the biggest competitor of Nike, and its revenue has reached $3 billion 80 million in 2014, and the company hopes to grow to $3 billion 820 million this year.

Now, New Balance's revenue is higher than that of Under Armour, reaching $3 billion 300 million in 2014, and according to Bloomberg, it wants to attract 4 billion dollars worldwide this year.

Its average growth rate over the past 5 years has also exceeded 15% of Nike's by 10%.

There is not yet an exact figure to prove that Under Armour is temporarily behind and ignores the Chinese market.

But at least, New Balance has made great efforts in this regard.

In 2011, New Balance dug up Zhang Hongwen, who worked for Nike, and worked for CEO in China.

In order to truly touch the local consumers, Zhang Hongwen asked Jonathan Lee to write his ad lines, and also worked with poor travel network to make a micro movie about travel.

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The foundation is running shoes. The whole development process is very long. But in order to fit the local consumers, we will consider the influence of localization on the production line research, and let local teams participate in the development cycle as much as possible. China is also an important part of it. Only in this way, can the demand be quickly fed back.

Tucker told the interface reporter.

This is also evident from the details of the conference site. New Balance, which has adjusted its strategy, has already valued China more.

Shi Dongpeng, the track and field athlete, and the 2012 Olympic champion men's foil personal champion thunder were honored as guests to interpret the new Slogan. The age of the executives Tucker, Keates and Zhang Hongwen added up to exactly 109, which equals the growth history of New Balance109.

According to Tucker's disclosure, this is also deliberately done by New Balance.

The whole scene was also arranged as an annular runway. Behind the anchors, a secret optical and shadow experience area was built with holographic technology.

People can walk in, try on new shoes, and try to run on the 10 meter runway after sweeping the yards through WeChat. The large screen next to the runway will immediately show the number of seconds used and make the rankings.

The most interesting thing is: on the big screen, I don't know when an unknown shoemaker surpasses the professional Shi Dongpeng.

It seems like the commercial competition of sports brands. You never know what the position of tomorrow's position is.