BEN ROBINSON

The latest inspirational advert from the challengers to Nike and Adidas’s sporting crowns has left the starting blocks with a splash.

A new 60 second spot for Under Armour’s #WeWill campaign features Syrian Olympic swimmer Yusra Mardini and a powerful tale of overcoming the most extreme challenges. Yusra competed as part of the Refugee Olympic Team at the 2016 Rio Olympics, having left her family and home in war-torn Syria just a year prior.

The Under Armour ad picks up the inspirational story as part of a wider campaign that also supported the relief efforts of first responders after the devastating Hurricane Harvey. The underlying message is that “sports can inspire, unite, and even change the world.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RWVgnrQtZM

An ambitious message, perhaps, but time and again sport proves to be a fantastic way to promote international unity and tell stories of challenging lives overcoming adversity. Events such as the Olympic Games and the FIFA Wold Cup truly do bring billions of people together and allow for inspiring tales to be told.

This year, we are also hearing some tales that until recently were less commonly told in the sporting arena. Finally it seems, there is a genuine shift in focus to bring women in to the picture. Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign has been hugely successful in getting more women more active in the UK since it’s launch in 2015.

However, the most emphatic new voices are coming from the Middle East. Yusra’s story follows on from Nike’s move to launch an athletic hijab after seeing Sarah Attar sprinting for Saudi Arabia at the London 2010 Olympics. Due for release in Spring 2018, the hijab line was announced with an epic ad showing Middle Eastern women playing their sport and looking seriously cool doing it. Finally, sport is no longer just for men.

With changing attitudes in the Middle East, as well as an acknowledged need to get everyone – but especially women – more active in the region, these are timely and well-produced campaigns. Working to encourage activity, they may also work to encourage unity, as more campaigns launch in the build up to the Qatar 2022 World Cup will finally give the Middle East some international sporting credentials to get behind and help open up a region that is alien and misunderstood by many – athletically or otherwise.

It seems that maybe sport does have the power to change the world. No longer just for men. No longer just a game.

In this century of enormous transformation, brands are increasingly aware of, the need to be proactive and establish themselves online in order to escape the consequences of falling behind and lose their competitive advantages. This impact of technology, particularly on content-based products like recorded music and books, is all too clear. The demise of Woolworths – once one of the UK’s largest music retailers – and the difficulties currently being experienced by HMV are perhaps the most poignant examples of how the Internet and digital technology has contributed to changing shopping habits and the retail landscape.

What many retailers nowadays are failing to understand however, is how physical brick-and-mortar stores are still as important as entering the digital landscape. This becomes vital in an era where customer service quality can be the difference for brands seeking to gain an edge over their competitors. Given that more and more people are migrating online, a crucial part of retaining their interest is to offer them the best experience possible in a real-world setting. The new wave of retail stores that thrive on delivering this superior customer service is through conveying an emotive brand experience in what LS:N Global calls ‘The Tomorrow Store’.

Accordingly, this concept explains the change towards delivering customer service through an almost theatrical experience, where retailers are aiming to engage with all of consumers’ five sense in their physical retail stores. That way, by engaging with your customers through an experience, a positive emotional ambiance is created where customers feel involved and an element of fun becomes embedded. This consequently leads the shopping experience to be an engaging and memorable one where brand loyalty can be established.

Great examples of experiential led retail offers have been appearing in shopping destinations over the last couple of years. Apple, which actively encourages consumers to play with their products and offers free workshops to help familiarize potential customers with software products, is perhaps one of the most obvious. In fashion retail there’s youth brands like Hollister, where shop front design, store layout, lighting, music and staff presentation are carefully managed to provide a consistent expression of the brand. Infiniti, Nissan’s luxury vehicle brand, evokes emotion and a sense of excitement when customers are introduced to their brand new car by letting them pull the covers off it, for the big reveal.

More contemporary and innovative examples are set to further revolutionise retailing, most remarkably in the new state-of-the-art Terminal 2 at London Heathrow Airport. According to Airports Council International, income from shoppers makes up 34%, on average, of an airport’s overall turnover. This figure becomes pivotal in getting the retail strategy correct for Heathrow’s new terminal as it expects to welcome 30 million passengers every year. Through its modern architecture and design cues, such as ‘a ceiling-high glass wall that provides a window on to the runway and additional natural light streams’, Heathrow encourages brands to experiment with new retail concepts that challenge the service design principle and status quo.

Adidas, a prominent brand of the 21st century, is capitalizing on this opportunity through its new wave of ‘Home Court’ stores that is set to transform the entire complexion of brick-and-mortars. The idea behind Home Court is to engage customers with more breath and depth of the Adidas brand than ever before where “the store has the look and feel of an arena, with the entrance resembling the tunnel players use to emerge on to a sports field”. The brand experience is further augmented by interactive touch-screens that allow shoppers to search online for products that meet their needs. Ultimately, Home Court stores pioneer a truly interactive retail experience that evokes all senses and emotion that revolutionizes service design and delivery.

Launched earlier this year in Beijing, Adidas has already brought the concept to the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent last month and it is set to take its place in Heathrow’s brand new Terminal 2. Unquestionably, the terminal will accommodate Home Court stores perfectly with a highly intuitive, ‘bright, open-plan layout … designed to help passengers navigate the terminal more easily’. This enables a great visual connection that will almost guarantee maximum exposure to Home Court and the Adidas brand.

Conceptualizing an interactive experience that is delivered inside the physical contours of a brick-and-mortar outlet, modern concepts like Home Court will drive the ‘Tomorrow Store’, combining both worlds of online and offline retail. Thomas Pink and Yo! Sushi are other early adopter brands that have jumped on this bandwagon and have started incorporating technology into their stores. Understanding the value of technology in people’s lives, Thomas Pink utilizes large touch-screen tables in its outlets, enabling customers to design their personalized garments and have them made and delivered to them anywhere in the world. Food giant Yo! Sushi meanwhile, is pioneering a mobile ordering system, allowing customers to order their food from their smart-phone app, transforming the service experience.

Ultimately, it is not difficult to understand that these changes and developments are collectively contributing to a new dimension of delivering a first-class customer service through innovative and emotional pioneered retail solutions. It would be naive to think that online retailers that offer more flexibility and convenience will completely replace brick-and-mortars when nothing comes close to a physical store to provide the real retail experience in the real world.

Importantly, it is paramount to grasp that bland, generic store experiences are no longer enough to lure customers of today. The ‘Tomorrow Store’ has to be social, emotive, and theatrical in engaging all senses at all touch points of the brand experience. Significantly, this has to be coupled with innovation, delivering an interactive shopping experience as technology unavoidably surrounds our everyday lives and will continue to do so in ways that are unimaginable.

The ‘Tomorrow Store’ is here today, and before technology makes it the yesterday store, it is time for brands to take action and transform their retail and service designs to successfully convey a world-class brand experience within their brick-and-mortar outlets that will serve the emotional needs of customers and be instrumental in establishing brand loyalty in the long run.

By: Burak Serin

Influenced by the Article ‘Service Design is Revolutionizing Retail’ (Marketing Week, 2014)

Adidas Group Chief Sales Officer Consumer Direct, Michael Stainer, speaks about the plans for Home Courts European roll-out: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIp0R4LXT2A#t=284

As June leaps off the bench this year, it brings with it not just the promise of the Great British Summer but also the excitement of the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

It is almost impossible to escape the surrounding furore, as everyone tries to get a piece of the brand value silverware on offer, through association (officially or otherwise) with the tournament.

Nike were one of the first off the mark, with an ad that at once plays up to their other cinematic spectacles of recent years (complete with a brilliant Hollywood cameo), while also tapping into a grassroots appeal that keeps their campaign grounded. The insight that kids play as their favourite stars while using jumpers for goalposts is an obvious one, and boys playing alongside their heroes is a classic fall-back for sports equipment, but there is a wit and style that gives Nike’s guerrilla offering an edge here.

Certainly over Adidas, whose dark dreams from Lionel Messi may appeal to an older crowd, but their campaign may have missed the nostalgia-fest that Panini and the BBC have also picked up on. Panini’s sticker albums have had a new burst of life, as a new generation of boys raised on swapping sticker albums in the playground have children (or even just a disposable income) to justify collecting again. The BBC, meanwhile, have gone for a Subbuteo style aesthetic, to reassert their position as being a big name in football, but still small enough to keep you engaged in your living room.

The brand with the most at stake, however, is Brand Brazil. With a rapidly growing economy, the huge South American country will be looking to raise it’s international profile, in the way London 2012 did for Brand Britain. Buses have been carnavalised and samba styles have infected many other products looking for association with the tournament. Whether the brand engagement will have the same lasting impact as the London Olympics, remains to be seen – a large part of the brand success came from the tournament’s smooth-running and fantastic show. Brazil has got off to a shaky start already, with its delayed stadium preparations. Whether it can build up a positive momentum of international engagement that can peak at the next olympics will be the challenge. Otherwise, Rio 2016 may have to be a second chance for Brand Brazil. But let’s hope they don’t need it, and the Beautiful Game has a beautiful tournament lit up by its greatest champions.

Adidas – Messi’s World Cup Dream

BBC’s promotion for its coverage of the tournament

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK2SCh4TPYM

FIFA TV’s official tournament spot

Lee helps ambitious brands solve business and marketing problems through the use of advanced technology combined with compelling contemporary user experiences.

A seasoned interactive marketing lead with 15 years experience, Lee’s agency careers spans Director positions including Omnicom’s Impact Proximity, FCB digital agency, Blue Barracuda and ATOM.

For Emirates Airlines Lee managed an entire portfolio of companies including the Airline, Holidays, Arabian Adventures, Skywards, SkyCargo, Al Maha Desert Resort & Spa.

As a conceptual/ strategic writer, Rebecca Jaks has over 20 years’ experience of brand development, creative strategising and writing across platforms and industry.

From speechwriting for Richard Branson to creating the concept for adidas’ first ever women’s store, Rebecca is driven by nailing an original thought and making words work as hard as imagery.

Rebecca’s branding & identity skillset includes developing brand tone of voice, creative development, internal engagement, and she has worked across a range of projects across experiential, print (press / outdoor / POS) & digital elements.