Under Armour Marketing Strategies: Rebuilding a Brand
Kevin Blank didn’t spend much time thinking about creating one of the largest sportswear brands in the world. He’s made it his mission to develop moisture-proof sportswear for amateur and professional athletes, and in 2014 surpassed his Adidas brand as the second largest sportswear brand in the world.
So what marketing strategies does Under Armor use?
It’s no secret that Under Armour Marketing Strategies are among the top games with sales just over $ 5 billion and have tripled their marketing investments in just 10 years. But after Puma, Adidas and the eternal kings of Nike Sportswear, the company has now dropped to fourth place.
Let’s blow the whistle and begin this analytical game about Under Armour Marketing Strategies that got to where they were before and how they aim to recapture second place or even their biggest competitor in late 2021 and 2022. Peak.
Close the audience gap
Like its closest competitor, Under Armor enjoys the support of many athletes, celebrities and sports organizations.
His most notable contributions include Dwayne Rock Johnson, wrestling actor, swimmer Michael Phelps, basketball player Stephen Kerry, and the US boxing team.
In 2014, Under Armor tried to find out the cause of his initial downfall in comparison to competitors.
Less Macho, More Women.
When they looked at the key characters in their brand, they found that they portrayed macho men who made their marketing feel strong, aggressive, and unattractive to women, which contributed to lose their potential market.
Given this exposure and its attempt to change, Under Armor decided to launch its “I Will What I Want” campaign to change its brand image and appeal to women in its audience.
Under Armor didn’t take the project lightly and partnered with New York advertising agency Droga5 to build the campaign. Many companies are now turning to online advertising agencies to redouble their efforts.
The brand decided to include American ballerina Misty Copeland and Brazilian model Gisele Bündchen as brand ambassadors and released their latest marketing video ads.
As a result of Armour Marketing Strategies, According to Starting Business, Under Armor saw:
- 5 billion media impressions worldwide
- 730% increase in brand association with the word “Empowering”
- 900% increase in brand affiliation with the word “stylish”
- And her greatest goal of all
A 28% increase in sales of women apparel.
The Armour Marketing Strategies was successful in expanding audiences and Under Armor now has a female market with 31% of consumers.
In addition to the sales success, Under Armor saw website traffic increase by 42 percent this year thanks to the “I Will What I Want” campaign, which had only gotten bigger in the past year alone due to the Covid-19 epidemic.
Harnessing the Power of Digital
In 2020, just like many companies around the world, Under Armour has seen a majority of 15,000 retail stores had to be closed for several weeks and months, and the company depends only on its online store.
Before this epidemic, the brand was planned to increase its marketing budget to 12% annual income. They wanted to focus on the upper activity to suppress, focus on sports marketing contracts and focus on the company’s brand.
With no way of physical interaction with their customers, the brand decided to choose the Omnichannel approach to create one of the largest online sports communities in the world.
The goal was not to get people to buy products, but instead, for them to see the brand as an experience and a way to connect to others behind their sports products.
The way they did this was to create as many digital customer experiences as possible with their brand at the center of it.
The world’s largest online fitness Community
Not only does the brand use all of its social media platforms as a place to connect, Under Armor has already invested $ 710 million in three fitness programs (MyFitnessPal, MapMyRun and Endomondo) and is now possesses a community of more than 120 million athletes.
This makes Under Armor the largest online fitness and health association in the world.
With an endless amount of data for a wide variety of audiences, a brand can now develop more specific products and services.
In what some call the loneliest and isolated year in history, 2020 called for unity and community in every way.
Over the past few months and years, Under Armor’s marketing strategies have proven that they bring together diverse sports communities. They kept this same rhythm throughout the pandemic via their mobile app endorsements
Recognize weaknesses – look to the future
Although the brand had thought of increasing its marketing costs in early 2020, Under Armor ended up spending $29 million less than last year, for a total of $ 550 million.
However, in 2021, the Under Armor board revised its post-epidemic marketing strategy to continue working on its original plan to increase brand awareness. This has proven to be one of the best advertising strategies for Under Armor to date.
More Than Just a Clothing Brand
In recent years, under Armour Marketing Strategies did not manage to increase the brand recognition, which has already caused a recession between brand growth. They have not been able to prove to their audience what Patrick Frisk describes as “why they should consider Under Armour Marketing Strategies”
In May of 2021, at the Q1 2021 Earnings Call between board members of Under Armour and the press, CEO Patrick Frisk mentioned that they are still “significantly under-penetrated from a brand awareness perspective” in various country markets such as China and Germany.
To fix these issues, the company plans on letting go of long term contracts such as endorsements and sponsorships and instead redirect the money to spend much more on upper-funnel marketing.
Frisk said that the idea of this campaign was to deliver:
…a singular Under Armour voice with focused performers [and] in 2021, we are evolving these efforts to bring the ecosystem of how we engage and inspire athletes across both physical and digital experiences into even better alignment…
In addition, the company plans to accelerate marketing investment this year to raise awareness and increase conversions, which in turn increases engagement and helps the brand achieve its ultimate goal of leadership thinking. drive consideration.
Lastly under Armor wants marketing investments should focus more on its goods and more on the experience the brand offers to its audience.
The Final Whistle
While Under Armor has struggled to be among the top 3 sportswear companies in the world for the past few years, they are sure to make a big change in their marketing strategy in 2021 to bring their name back to the top.
If your company can benefit from some changes in marketing strategy, especially rebranding, then work with one of our experienced branding agencies to help you out.
