A couple of days back, the Japan-based sportswear brand, Asics found its new brand ambassador Shraddha Kapoor, to solve its problem statement of brand awareness for its women’s category amongst the newer audiences.
Kapoor’s digital presence stands strong at 81.7 million followers on Instagram.
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Saurabh Sharma
Saurabh Sharma, Director- Marketing, Asics Corporation, stated that since the overall brand, including the women’s category, was witnessing the issue of brand awareness, even though they had a male celebrity as the brand ambassador, it was essential to reach out to newer audiences through a female celebrity.
“We got Shraddha Kapoor on board because of her amazing following on a social media platform and the alignment of her ethos with that of the brand. We always work on our tagline which is ‘Sound mind, Sound body and Performance’ and therefore whenever we see somebody, we always try to evaluate their performance and how they are seen in the market and that’s when Shraddha Kapoor was onboarded,” he said.
Earlier, Asics had appointed Tiger Shroff as its brand ambassador for India in September 2019.
While the brand spokesperson couldn’t reveal numbers, he mentioned that this is a deal where the brand dealt with her directly in money terms to get her to portray the brand through their social media platform and the campaigns that they manage with her to increase the market share of the brand’s women category in the overall business.
“Our first intention is to grow from where we are sitting on brand awareness of around 66% in India whereas other competition brands are on the higher side because of the kind of time they've spent in the market. Post achieving this, we will start focusing on the consideration and preferences as well,” he said.
Commenting on the brand’s ad strategy with this association, he stated that since Asics’ first intention was to inform the world that the brand has onboarded Kapoor and that too within the consumer space, the association’s news was broken to the world by connecting her through one of their products that was launched in the month of July through an ad campaign.
The various legs attached to the same have been OOH, traditional media and media cut-outs in various cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, etc.
“But, the major chunk of money is getting spent now on the digital platform because that is the need of the hour as all the consumers of Asics are present on the digital platforms,” he said.
Additionally, the brand is also making the most out of the association by regularly creating engaging content which includes quizzing consumers and enabling them to participate in their stories and feature on the brand’s official handle, which further gets customers to know more about the brand.
Even though the Tier I cities are the main growth drivers for the brand, Tier II and III cities, which currently have Asics stores, will be covered in the times to come, owing to the brand’s objective of reaching out to the maximum audience.
With that being said, he also hinted that the ongoing announcement campaign will not be the only brand campaign in the second half of the current fiscal year. The brand will leverage the association with a few ad campaigns slated to come out during the festive period in the second half through the allocation of a “decently big” ad spend.
Sharma further stated that at the moment, the brand’s contract with Tiger Shroff stands over and is in the negotiation phase, while the contract with Kapoor is for two years as of now, it can be extended to a longer term in future.
Commenting on the target bracket of the brand, he stated that Asics caters to a varied audience spectrum which initially started from 24-50 years and then moved on to targeting 18-50 year-olds.
“Till some time back, we saw a big surge coming from the online platforms including the brand’s website. But now that things are returning to normalcy, the retail ground market is bouncing back,” he added.
He also mentioned that since every brand store features products from four major categories which include Core Performance Sports, Apparel, Equipment, and Sports, the brand is targeting the older audience through sponsoring big running events like Tata Mumbai Marathon and TCS World 10K, etc. Asics is also eyeing another property in Delhi because India has got a good amount of runners who are doing full marathons, half marathons and 10 kilometres in the age group of 40-50 years old individuals who are well-travelled and have seen the brand overseas.
“Globally too, we are leading the category of tennis shoes as a sport with a lot of international players playing in our tennis shoes. In the cricket space, we are also seeing a lot of contribution from people who are playing corporate cricket since Asics Australia are the official sponsor of the Australian cricket team. From both these, we're also seeing a surge in the CPS category as well,” he added.
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