Reebok International Ltd. has been active in the online space for several years, launching such initiatives as an online sponsorship on the RBK All-Access Pass section of NBA.com. This year, the company made headlines with its Terry Tate campaign, which aired on TV during the Super Bowl and continued online. Marc Fireman, the company’s director of interactive marketing, told us about some other innovative projects currently running, and shared his thoughts about online marketing in general.
iMedia Connection: What are some of the most successful campaigns your company has executed recently, and what made them successful?
Fireman: One is the Terry Tate campaign that premiered during the Super Bowl (see “Terry Lives Long After the Super Bowl” for details on this campaign), and the other is a more recent RBK campaign called Whodunit?. Both are integrated campaigns.
Terry Tate was a successful integrated campaign. It was leveraged by TV, PR and the Internet, which in combination drove the buzz. Reasons for the success: great creative, launching in the right place (Super Bowl), and having an Internet component that drove viral marketing to another level for us. We’re approaching 16 million downloads. In June alone we had 1½ million film views with no advertising at all.
The Whodunit? campaign for our Above the Rim product involved TV, Internet, print, out-of-home, and other online media such as email, wireless and IVR. We used TV to create a mystery around a sports crime that was committed. The campaign then drove the consumer online to become a detective – to find evidence, analyze clues and determine who committed the sports crime. Consumers had to register to play. At the end of the campaign, everyone who provided correct answers to who committed the crime and what the person was wearing was entered into a sweepstakes. The winner gets to be at the shoot for the next Above the Rim commercial.
We then kept the detectives in the game by sending them new clues via wireless devices, and email. For example, screening a wireless message on Monday, prompted consumers to call a number to hear the testimony of a witness.
Another component of the campaign was a tie in with the retail stores. On the site we created a foot tread as evidence. We told consumers to print the tread out, take it to a store, and compare it against other ATR products at retail to see which shoe the perpetrator was wearing when committing the sports crime.
We also ran online advertising with BET, MTV, Ugo and Yahoo!. We have found that online media has done really well for us as far as driving registration. We’re seeing click-throughs between 5% and 13% for rich media across the board.
We also found that, although people think kids are outside in the summer and not on the computer, that’s not true. Traffic doubled on weekends for Whodunit. Kids were online surfing, and watching TV. It had a cumulative effect, doubling sign-ups over weekends.
We worked with three agencies – The Arnell Group, Beyond Interactive and Zugara – and they partnered together to execute a mystery that synchronized the online and offline for a seamless campaign.
We began running this campaign at the beginning of July and it ran until mid August.
iMedia Connection: What lessons did you learn from it?
Fireman: Teens and young adults are definitely online more than we think they are, especially in the summer. We’ve learned that the Net is not affected by season as much as it used to be. Kids are using the Net just like any other medium if not more so. And they are using TV and the Internet as a combined medium.
iMedia Connection: What does your company have planned in order to approach the interactive space in different and unique ways?
Fireman: The campaigns we’ve done are pretty unique. We’ll continue with the type of things we’re doing. For example, one initiative we did this year was a trivia game we call Toe-to-Toe, in which a consumer challenges an athlete in a game show format. We have already done one with Steve Francis but we will launch a new game in November featuring Allen Iverson.
We also have a partnership with Runners World called Reebokrunner.com that is a hybrid of our two sites and leverages Runners World content with Reebok footwear and technology information. You can get to it from either Reebok.com or from Runnersworld.com through online media.
iMedia Connection: What are the vexing issues facing your company and online advertising/marketing, in general?
Fireman: In the past it was primarily budgetary, but we’ve bridged that hurdle somewhat because of all of the studies and all of the research that we’ve gotten about how to apply the Net to media allocation. We’ve taken steps to apply more online media to the overall mix. Also, the success of campaigns like Terry Tate have done a great job in bringing the Internet to the forefront of the company so it gets treated like an equal partner with other forms of media.
The issues we now face include decisions on how to use the budget we have to get the best out of online marketing. It’s a consistency issue more than anything else. It is hard to build a consistent campaign site to site. Integration is still slow, a lot of companies (companies that have print, TV and online areas) are thinking about it, they’ve built integrated groups, but it’s difficult to put it all together. None are doing it very well yet.
iMedia Connection: How have your goals in the online world changed from last year to this year?
Fireman: We’re more focused on database marketing and relationship marketing than last year. We’re also more focused on global marketing, trying to take some of the learning’s from the United States and apply them to other countries -- Europe, Japan and Korea, specifically -- and vice versa, especially in the wireless arena.
iMedia Connection: How did online advertising contribute to your company's overall sales goals last year?
Fireman: Online is just one bullet in a whole arsenal of marketing tools. I could make the argument that if I ran one print ad, sales wouldn’t move, or ran one TV commercial with a two-week flight, that wouldn’t affect sales. That’s why integrated campaigns work. The online component can definitely help move the needle, but not more or less than any other piece of marketing. The only place where you could really effectively measure this is with e-commerce but we don’t use online media specifically against that distribution channel.
iMedia Connection: Does your company plan on increasing its spending on interactive media, and when do you expect interactive to take a larger share of the total marketing budget?
Fireman: Reebok has taken the approach of not just taking x percent of the media budget and applying it online, but instead working on a case-by-case basis -- when it makes sense for a campaign to have online components, we’ll put a significant amount of money toward it. That’s actually a huge shift from where we were last year
iMedia Connection: How do you perceive rich media? You mentioned that you are using it in campaigns. Do you think the benefits make up for the cost?
Fireman: We really like rich media. We think it’s very effective for us. We use media as a means to an ends not as a means in itself. So in every media package we have some sort of home-page takeover, Eyeblaster, etc. We think that if we take what we spend for those smaller units and apply it to rich media, will see incremental increases in response.
iMedia Connection: How do you evaluate different sites for media placement?
Fireman: Mainly affinity. Some of it is seasonal, especially when dealing with sports sites. It also has to do with what kind of packaging they’re offering, what kind of rich media package they have. We’re also starting to look at day-part targeting. Also, do they have integrated marketing programs; other pieces of media we can combine with the online buy?
iMedia Connection: How can online marketing mature to overcome corporate reluctance?
Fireman: I think it starts less with the corporation and more with the ad agencies that are in charge of creating the ads. How much does your agency understand online marketing and how much are they willing to invest in it? If agencies embrace the medium, there’s a higher chance for creating integrated marketing stories.
iMedia Connection: What knowledge can you impart to traditional advertisers that may be hesitant to enter into the online space?
Fireman: If you don’t test anything, you’ll never know. If you’re reluctant, and if you do it on too small of a scale, you’re setting yourself up for failure. So pick one campaign and commit to online media for that one campaign. See how it works, then you have a baseline. I have the same advice for email, or any medium for that matter. Make a commitment; make sure it’s positioned as a test; go from there. You have to start somewhere.
