Text / Li Luyuan
Editor / Guo Yang
In 2023, adidas is bringing people back to the glory of the brand ten years ago in the global running market.
In 2013, when the first pair of running shoes equipped with BOOST technology midsole was launched, the new running experience brought by the unique foot feeling not only made many runners flock to Adi running shoes, but also directly leveraged the "golden decade" of technological innovation in the entire running market. Now, when global road running events are back in the heat again, Adidas has once again used a pair of ADIZERO ADIOS PRO EVO 1 running shoes weighing only 138g and subversive design to continue the brand's "no impossible" narrative in the market competition.
阿瑟法夺冠后亲吻比赛穿着的ADIZERO ADIOS PRO EVO 1跑鞋
In September this year, Arthur Fa's affectionate kiss to EVO 1 after crossing the line in Berlin directly boosted the expectations of the global running circle for Adidas running shoes. IN THE RECENTLY CONCLUDED GUANGZHOU MARATHON, ADIZERO ADIOS PRO 3 WON THE TOP THREE FEATS OF ALL MEN AND WOMEN, WHICH ALSO MADE THE DOMESTIC RUNNING INDUSTRY RE-EVALUATE THE PROFESSIONAL STRENGTH OF THE ADIDAS BRAND.
However, for brands, market voice is only the basis for success, and how to effectively transform it into large-scale revenue at the right pace, continue to deepen brand influence and drive new growth is the key to subsequent operations.
To this end, as this iconic year draws to a close, adidas held a running summit to review the brand's achievements over the past year, unveil new shoes, and use a new brand running manifesto to try to tell the consumer market once again who we are and how we can do better.
Renewing the brand running statement, adidas communicates with the runner community with sincerity
"It's just a group of people who are obsessed with running and want to make it more fascinating. 」
On December 16, the 2023 Adidas Running Summit was held in Zhuhai, Guangdong. The above sentence is the brand's new running manifesto officially announced during the summit.
As the highlight of Adidas' running business towards the end of 2023, the brand has given full sincerity in the setting of the summit, not only invited Simon Lockett, Product Director of Running Footwear at the brand headquarters to explain the design concept of the EVO 1 running shoes, but also specially invited Wu Yanni, Shi Yuhao and Adidas Greater China Managing Director Siu Ka Lok to share their feelings in the past year and their expectations for the new year.
Outside of the summit, the EVO 1 running shoe, which has never been publicly available to the public, will also be brought to the brand's running booth in the future for runners to experience in advance.
However, in stark contrast to the "heavy" planned by the summit, it is the "lightness" of the brand's new running manifesto. Except for the declaration introduced by a short video at the beginning, the brand did not make much public interpretation of this, but in the post-summit exchange, Bian Qiang, director of running category of Adidas Greater China, gave a brand-level explanation to Krypton, "'People who are obsessed with running' may themselves be running enthusiasts, and they also include people who make running shoes. 」
"At Adidas, all the people involved in the development of running products are themselves enthusiasts of running, and we understand the sport enough to empathize with consumers. We hope that through our own efforts, we can listen to the voices of different runners, provide consumers with better products, and make the whole running movement better. Bian Qiang said.
Bian Qiang (left) shares the development concept of Adidas running shoes with Simon (middle), Product Director of Running Footwear at Adidas Headquarters and Robin, Vice President of Running and Professional Sports Series Business at Adidas Greater China
In fact, as a "business card" for the brand to export values and communicate with consumer groups, we can clearly get a glimpse of the brand's insight into the current market development and future planning. Through such an emotional expression, Adidas not only presents its more than 70 years of running genes to the public, but also shows the brand's determination to continue to help the development of the running industry in the future.
At the same time, in the current market environment, consumers have formed a strong ability to think critically about consumer culture. They don't want to be easily defined, and brands can only establish a real emotional connection with them if they communicate sincerely and equally from the heart. In the new running manifesto, Adidas introduces from the perspective of "me" and communicates in a "light" way, leaving enough space for empathy to the real target group, which is undoubtedly in line with this market narrative logic.
Looking back at the development process of Adidas from today's perspective, the fact that "I want to make running more charming" has long been engraved in the brand's genes.
Listening, testing, improving, Adidas has been circulating for 74 years
Gene is the core manifestation of a brand's market development and the formation of a differentiated image cognition with other brands, and it is also an important basis for the output of the brand declaration.
In the official copy of Adidas' new running manifesto, there is a sentence that attracted the attention of most people present, "Listen, test, modify (Listen, Test, Modify), no matter how complicated things are, just repeat these three steps over and over again, and polish them 15 more times for the last 10%, running, this kind of thing, I can't rush." In Bian's view, this is what Adidas has been insisting on doing.
Different from the current consumption decision when people choose to advance to a certain sport, in the early stage of human participation in sports, due to the complexity of design and technology, the subdivision and development of footwear products lagged far behind the clothing category.
AT THAT TIME, ADOLF ADI DASSLER, WHO WAS KEEN ON SPORTS, DISCOVERED WHY DIFFERENT SPORTS HAVE DIFFERENT CLOTHES, EQUIPMENT, AND VENUES, BUT THE SHOES ON HIS FEET ARE THE SAME?
The personality traits of the founders can often have a long-term impact on the development of a brand. Adidas' in-depth insight into the needs of athletes has driven Adidas' 74 years of R&D and innovation in the field of professional sports equipment, and has also infused the brand with the German "actions speak louder than words" characteristics - which partly explains why we always realize that Adidas has been exploring and refining for many years after a product has really been successful, and when the market trend goes back, it is found that they have created so many classics.
Even in the post-summit exchange, when Krypton tried to use the EVO 1 running shoe that subverted the industry's perception as a node to discuss the beginning of the next "golden age" of Adidas' running business, Bian Qiang politely rejected this statement. He prefers to call it "accumulation".
Adi Dassler observes athletes' needs and improves the shoe
Indeed, even in 2013, which was recognized as the "golden decade" of midsole technology innovation in running shoes, Adidas had been exploring the application of BOOST technology with BASF Chemical Company for many years, and before Arthurfa improved the women's marathon world record by 2 minutes and 11 seconds in the EVO 1 running shoe in September this year, its core midsole technology Lightstrike Pro had already been proven in the professional arena.
The core value of this narrative logic is that Adidas' product development philosophy is not a fast-moving consumer operation that is completely dependent on market trends, but a long-term development path. The reason why we can do this is based on the in-depth implementation and practice of the brand's gene of "listening, testing, and improving".
It is also driven by this concept that we can see that the brand's performance-focused ADIZERO series has continued to evolve over the past decade, and now has formed a rich product matrix that can cover a variety of running scenarios such as training preparation, 5-10 km, half marathon, full marathon, etc.
AND WHEN RUNNING HAS BECOME A POPULAR WAY TO RELIEVE STRESS IN A FAST-PACED LIFE, ADIDAS HAS ALSO TRANSLATED THE SUCCESSFUL EXPERIENCE ON THE PROFESSIONAL TRACK INTO A MASS APPLICATION - DURING THE SUMMIT, ADIDAS OFFICIALLY RELEASED THE BRAND'S NEW GENERATION OF SUPERNOVA RUNNING SHOES, WITH AN INNOVATIVE MIDSOLE DREAMSTRIKE+ TO MAKE A NEW DEFINITION OF COMFORTABLE RUNNING, COMMITTED TO HELPING THE PUBLIC RUNNERS ENJOY DAILY RUNNING MORE.
THE NEW SUPERNOVA RUNNING SHOE SERIES
"We just have to do what we need to do well, do what we feel is right, and take every pair of feet seriously," Bian Qiang told Krypton about future planning, "From the brand level, we still have to return to our original intention, how to really make our products better from the perspective of consumers and their needs." 」
In the face of the continuous growth of the domestic running market, after the release of the brand running declaration, how to transform it into word-of-mouth and recognition at the public level, Adidas has also made a full layout.
Deeply cultivating the Chinese market, adidas has brought more people to enjoy running
In Adidas' two earnings conferences this year, Bjoern Gulden, the brand's global CEO, who took office at the beginning of the year, mentioned the importance of the Chinese market, and in his first visit to China in September, he repeatedly reiterated that "China is one of Adidas's three strategic key markets in the world".
At the same time, he also made it clear that "if Adidas wants to win more consumers in China, it needs to launch more mass-market products in the future, but at the same time without sacrificing high performance." This is undoubtedly a signal that adidas hopes to reshape its position in the Chinese market through more targeted product layout and more localized operation strategies.
After years of deep cultivation in the domestic market, the running business has developed a long-term influence, which is obviously one of the key points to promote this goal to become a reality.
The basis for the judgment is the continuous growth of the people's enthusiasm for running, which gives birth to the infinite prospects for the development of the domestic running market.
Entering 2023, domestic road running events will return in a centralized manner, but they still cannot meet the needs of runners. Taking the Beijing Marathon as an example, the 30,000 places attracted a total of 130,000 applicants, and the winning rate was only 23%.
You must know that most of the domestic marathon participants are concentrated in the middle-aged group, and the proportion of runners in the 30-49 age group is as high as 69% this year, far exceeding other age groups. However, in stark contrast, it is the rapid growth of young runners in the mainland running market in recent years, according to the "Joy Running Circle 2021 China Running White Paper", only the post-00 runners have sprung up with a growth rate of 62.3%, and the growth trend of female runners is also strong, and the overall quality of the running group has improved.
The rapid growth of young and high-quality people has injected impetus into the development of the running market. According to Nielsen's China Marathon Crowd and Consumer Market Insight Report, Chinese runners spend more than 11,000 yuan per person on average, a large part of which is spent on running equipment, and running shoes are the top priority - after years of development, China's running market is still a blue ocean for sports brands to grow.
However, for international brands to succeed in the Chinese market, they must create a local strategy that can be integrated into the local market, adhere to a long-term approach, and form a strong connection with the consumer group. And this is exactly what Adidas has been doing in recent years.
The 2023 Beijing Marathon was a great event
At the product level, for the fast-growing group of running sports participants in China, Xiao Jiale, managing director of adidas Greater China, mentioned that in the past five years, running has changed a lot in China, where 500 million people participate in running, some elite athletes run to participate in competitions and marathons, while some people just enjoy jogging and enjoy the fun of running.
This is also why we have seen that adidas has insisted on enriching and iterating the ADIZERO series product matrix in the past few years, and based on the successful experience of the series, it has created products for the public's daily running. "Different groups of people need different running shoes. Therefore, our running product range must provide a suitable pair of running shoes for different runners. Xiao Jiale said.
In addition to products, in terms of marathon sponsorship and runner service in China, Adidas also practices long-term companionship. This year is the 13th year of cooperation between adidas and North Malaysia, and it has been sponsoring Guangzhou Malaysia for 10 years, and in addition to professional marathons, adidas has also set its sights on the next generation of runners to help the long-term development of China's running industry.
One of the most typical examples is the official campus road running event for college students officially certified by the Ministry of Education - CURA Adidas China College Student Road Running League. Based on this platform, adidas organizes road running activities, training courses, events, etc., so that more college students can start and enjoy running, and those who meet the event qualification standards may also directly qualify for top domestic marathon events such as North Malaysia. At present, there are 27 participating universities in CURA, including 24 985 and 211 universities such as Tsinghua University and Peking University.
It is not difficult to see that after years of hard work in the Chinese running market, Adidas has formed a closed loop of brand development of "product-service-community-event". The brand's influence and endorsement in the professional arena can leverage the reputation and performance growth of the consumer market, and based on the event and community communication, it can also help the brand obtain the most authentic opinions and feedback, promote better product iteration and upgrading, and help more people participate in and enjoy running.
Looking forward to the next step, Siu Ka Lok also revealed, "Since Adidas entered China, it has been working with many athletes. From this year onwards, we will increase investment in this area to support Chinese athletes to have better training and better performance, and hope that through these efforts, we can arouse everyone's interest in participating in sports, develop a healthy life, and help achieve a healthy China and national fitness, so as to create more impossibilities with a better body. 」
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Entering the third decade of the 21st century, Adidas' brand declaration for the consumer market as a whole presents a trend of "traceability" and "restart".
Earlier this year, adidas Originals launched its "A Pair of Classics, a Thousand Resonances" annual campaign, which led to the leap of its classic shoes from the sports field to the field of youth culture, and when the running business voiced that it was "just a group of people who are obsessed with running and want to make running more charming" No one will doubt that Adidas, which has made countless changes in the field of professional sports, is coming back.
As the brand said, "Adhering to the principle of runner first, we will use a full range of services to let more runners enjoy running, adhere to the concept of product innovation, and chase the limits of mankind with epoch-making products." This is Adidas' insistence on running. 」
Adidas has returned to its original intention, which is enough to make every consumer look forward to it.