What's Wrong With Reebok?

Reebok is a brand that's lost a considerable amount of its luster since its eighties hey day.

If Nike and Adidas represent the high performance end of the athletic equipment spectrum; with brands like Puma and Converse at the fashion end; it's hard to determine exactly where Reebok lies. Granted, the brand is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Adidas, but that is no excuse for having an ambiguous and inconsistent brand strategy.

Take these two TV spots featured below that are running concurrently. The first, for the new "Zigtech" shoes featuring Sidney Crosby (Another spot shows Chad Ochocinco), does little to convince us that Reebok's new cross trainer is anything more than a short lived gimmick.



Contrast this to the following spot showing how Crosby practiced hockey as a boy in Nova Scotia. If this does not move the sports lover in all of us, I don't know what will.



My point here is not that one or the other of these representations of the Reebok brand is wrong, it's just that doing both at the same time begets ambiguity. While the Zigtech spot is captivating and entertaining, it also screams of ephemeral, throwaway trendiness -- much the same way Toyota's FJ Cruiser does. On the other hand, the spot showing Crosby returning to his roots where he discovered his love for the game speaks to authenticity, passion and permanence.

What do you think - what's the best plan of attack for Reebok to remain relevant today?

The Starbucks of Social Media

If I didn’t know better, I’d say Twitter is taking over the world.

The microblogging platform has entered the mainstream conversation at an alarming rate. Last Sunday, several streams of “traditional media” were scouring Sarah Palin’s tweets of 140 characters for further insight into her sudden retirement. Last week, controversial Bengals receiver Chad Ochocinco lauded Twitter as his retaliatory weapon against pesky reporters. Guy Kawasaki has said he could live a week without his cell phone but not a week without Twitter.

This begs the question, why? Facebook is still going gangbusters with no sign of slowing, and Linkedin continues to add thousands of users each day. Each of these sites is terrific at enhancing its users’ professional or personal connectedness, but Twitter’s genius lies in successfully combining the two. By appealing to so many, so often, for so many different purposes, Twitter has become the Starbucks of social media.

Marshaling the confluence of personal and professional is no mean feat, but Twitter pulls it off with aplomb. Like Starbucks’ now famous concept of “the third place”, Twitter provides an environment for college kids to share study notes, soccer moms to host book club sessions, and business people to meet and network. Sound familiar?

Just as Starbucks’ popularity exploded with practically no advertising, Twitter’s success has come via the road less traveled. We often hear how clarity and focus are paramount for a brand, but Twitter is a model of ambiguity as to who uses it and how. A murky strategic premise of any brand usually sounds its death knell (Pontiac anyone?), but Twitter seems to thrive on being all things to all people.

That said, the credit for this online juggernaut cannot be placed solely at the feet of Evan Williams and co. Since its launch in 2006 Twitter has evolved significantly, driven largely by user behavior. The advent of @replies, hashtags, URLs and re-tweets were the brainchild of the collective community rather than the C-suite. Furthermore, user engagement is constantly being improved by third party applications -- in doing so adding increments of improvement to the user experience.

Only time will tell if the Twitter juggernaut can continue to flourish. But for brands looking to get their fingers dirty in the chaotic maelstrom of Web 2.0., the lesson we can learn is a valuable one. As David Armano says -- the collective has become the focus group. Brands need not compromise what they stand for, just because they take an intimate interest into how user preferences can shape functionality.