PUMA: THE $1 MILLION LACE TIE

Morning!Hope you've had a smashing week. Mine has been crazy. My brother Morgan is in town for his birthday. We've just finished interviews for our second hire (announcement coming soon). Oh and we signed another 3 clients. Not a bad week by any means.

If your week has been as busy as mine, relax, kick back and enjoy some killer marketing. Today's rundown: - Puma's marketing genius- How they used shoelaces to sell football boots- How you can do something similar

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Company Overview

Valuation: €9.17 Billion (Source)

Revenue: €7.87 Billion (Source)

Puma is a sport and lifestyle brand that you probably know very well. It's one of the big 3 with Nike and Adidas, but quickly making its way up the ranks. They've been around forever, but their rise to the top is still barely getting started.

This year they've already announced double-digit sales growth and they are hot on Nike's heels. Will they become the biggest sports manufacturer in the world? Probably not anytime soon. But they are No.1 at one thing...

Knowing to put their brand exactly where their target audience is looking.Let's get into it!

Breaking Down The Strategy

Attention is quickly becoming the most valuable currency on the planet. In fact, it probably already is.However, most brands go about it the wrong way. They trying and drag people's attention away from what they're doing and onto themselves. They essentially plant themselves on a pedestal and scream "Look at me" - and it works (sometimes). But it also takes a HUGE amount of time, effort and money. Plus, as I said, it doesn't always work.

Puma on the other hand has a knack for taking a completely different approach. Rather than putting all their time and effort into dragging people's attention onto them, they just put their brand where the attention already is. There's no better example of this than the Pelé lace tie.

In 1970, Adidas and Puma were battling it out to be the No.1 football boot brand. With Puma trying to push their infamous Puma King's.

The problem for Puma was that any advertising to do with football had gotten crazy expensive due to the rampant competition with Adidas. So, they had to figure out a way to step ahead in the footballing world in a way that Adidas could never match.

They did 2 simple things:1. They identified where their target audience's attention was

The macro was football games (of course). They then narrowed it down to the World Cup and then to the best team in the World Cup at the time, Brazil.

They had their spot: A brazil World Cup game.2. They put their brand right where those eyes were looking

Now, this is where the genius bit of marketing comes in.

Puma knew that there was only one point in the game where everyone's eyes would be in one spot. That's at the kick-off. So, they paid Pelé (the most renowned player at the time) to pause at the kick-off and go down to tie his shoelace.

For over 30 seconds, millions of football fans sat and watched Pelé tie his Puma boots.

Just take a look...

Even with the horrendous camera quality at the time you can clearly see the big Puma stripe on the boots.

Pelé was paid around $120,000 dollars for that quick tie of the laces. Which is equivalent to $800,000 today when adjusted for inflation. Crazy amount of money to pay, but one of the best marketing moves of all time. They got millions of football players around the world staring right where they wanted them to. But the best part is, they did it with very little effort.

Although this was a great showcase of Puma's genius marketing, it's not the only time they've used this strategy. In fact, they've done it again and again throughout the years.

The photo above is of Usain Bolt crossing the finish line for the fastest EVER 100m run. You see that big fat puma stripe down the side of his foot? Yep, me too.

The below photo is Bolt posing with his 200M world record time. What's that logo on his feet? Ahh yes, it's Puma.

I know what you're thinking: "Who cares Niall? Every sports brand sponsors athletes."

I get that, but what you're not seeing is the fact Puma pay Bolt millions of $$$ every single year. Other brands would have distributed that to various other athletes instead.

Puma on the other hand understands that these moments of Bolt wearing their shoes will last forever. Those photos above are so much more valuable than having 1000 other athletes wearing Puma. It's not a matter of how many athletes can we get wearing Puma's. It's how can we stamp the puma brand on pivotal moments when are target audience is looking.

It's a simple strategy, but with a sprinkle of marketing genius it becomes one of the most effective strategies on the planet.

How To Implement It

As I said, the strategy here is very simple. However, it's much harder to actually put into practice.

Because no matter how well you outline your target audience, it isn't that easy to actually get in front of that audience. It takes some genius, some real genius. But that's the fun part, right? So, I'll leave the genius to you, but here's the step-by-step you need to go through:

1. Know where your target audience is looking

One key thing to mention here is that this strategy works for both B2B and B2C. It's not about how many eyes you get on you, it's about WHAT eyes are looking. Think TikTok vs LinkedIn, one audience is business owners and the other is full of 12-year-old kids (only kidding, don't kill me TikTok people).

DO NOT underestimate this step though. Everything else relies on it. So really take your time figuring this out.2. Put your brand exactly where they are looking

This is the genius part. I can't offer much help here other than: be creative and always think about what will get the eyes looking. This is the part where you earn your keep!

3. All publicity isn't good publicity

No matter what you say, I'll die on this hill.

If you're a B2B business and you get your TA's attention through streaking at a business event - that's not going to help your business.

Eyes + Genius = Winning formula

And that's all for today! I actually had a bunch of fun writing this. Hope you got the same enjoyment out of reading it. Have a great rest of your Sunday.— Niall

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This has been a breakdown of Puma's marketing strategy. I hope you have learned something and can implement a similar strategy in your business!

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