The Rebirth of Puma
Sports have always had a huge presence in media. But how have sports grown into such a dominant force on social media? Puma, one of the biggest sport leisure and athletic brands has allowed the world of sports and pop culture to connect via the social realm.
With the signing of Jay-Z as the president of Puma’s basketball operations in 2018, Puma’s presence on social media has come to life. With this rebirth, Puma has been exploring news ways to connect pop culture and sport with millennials, getting creative with its targeted athlete sponsorship, color schemes, and cartoon designs, in an effort to increase their engagement rate.
After falling deeply behind Nike and Adidas in third spot, Puma rebuilt their brand, therefore refurbishing their social media presence as well. Let’s break it down.
With its current 11.5 million followers, Puma has remodeled their Instagram page especially, adding homemade videos from fans promoting the brand, focusing on this vintage film style of photography, while incorporating many symbolic colors and features to embody one specific aspect: SPEED!
The Puma brand is all about speed. With its constant use of fast sports cars and electric symbols, Puma is clearly conveying that buying Puma products allows you to move quicker, gain agility and be the fastest possible in your respective discipline. Puma also sponsors many prolific Olympian runners, Formula 1 drivers and soccer players, with the recent signing of Neymar Jr. from Nike.
As mentioned above, Puma’s targeted sponsorship of athletes has been instrumental in the development of their brand on social media. Signing Neymar Jr. for 11 years at 23 million dollars a year seems ludicrous, but it all makes perfect sense. With Neymar Jr. comes 143 million followers. I repeat, 143 million followers visiting Puma’s social platforms and products. That’s plenty of traction. And with Neymar Jr., Puma has used him to bring back the infamous Puma King soccer cleat, a shoe that was worn by legends such as Pele, Johan Cruyff, and Maradona.
However, it doesn’t stop here. Puma is currently sponsoring many influential athletes that can also be considered social media stars, in an effort to close the gap between the sports world and pop culture. Professional athletes such as Lewis Hamilton, Usain Bolt, Kyle Kuzma, and Antoine Griezmann are all sponsored by Puma. To add to this list, Puma has gotten even more creative by sponsoring pop culture stars and celebrities such as Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez, J Cole and Winnie Harlow to name a few.
While Puma has done a great job in combining their sponsorship deals with cultural icons, they have also pushed the limits in terms of stylized content. With the introduction of film photography and cartoon animated content, Puma has really focused on the promotion of their shoes. Their kicks are put in the foreground to stand out, while the background tells the story of how this shoe came to life. The overall picture of the product portrays the use of the shoe. Is it for casual purposes or is it for athletic wear only? The example below demonstrates this notion.
While Puma’s social media turnover has been astonishing, they do lack structure. Personally, with all of the color schemes going on, a little structure between product placement, sponsored ads, and live sport photos can have more of a timely regime. In other words, Puma’s placement is a tad all over the place.
In comparison to other players in their respective industry, Puma struggles in competing with Nike and Adidas. With both of these brands having a combined 180 million followers, it leaves Puma well behind in third place. However, with Puma’s current social media marketing plan, it won’t be too long before they catch up in terms of brand recognition and identity. It’s never easy to rebuild your brand from scratch, but Puma managed to do that in less than two years.
