Puma recently joined forces with the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) as their Official Footwear Partner. The sportswear brand will provide athletes with podium and travel footwear, along with accessories during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
The brand has also launched a campaign featuring PV Sindhu’s smash, Kishore Jena’s throw, and PR Sreejesh’s reflex time on billboards all across Mumbai. Puma’s IOA campaign, titled ‘See the Game Like We Do’, comparing each of the sportspersons’ game to the train speed, skyscraper height and human blink time.
While the campaign, from the ideation to the creation of creative to the shoot, was executed in-house, Interspace helped in operations i.e. placing billboards on the building, train and hoarding
Speaking about why OOH was the preferred choice for the brand this time, Shreya Sachdev, Associate Director and Head of Marketing at Puma India, said, “For us, medium of distribution is the last decision we make. What matters is, ‘What is the message that you want to communicate and what is the best way to communicate that message’. So, the campaign that we've done this time, the only way to do justice to what we wanted to say was an outdoor campaign”
Since the brand wanted to compare the prowess of the athlete in terms of height or speed or distance, the only way they could have done it was literal manifestations of that and hence the best and most critical way to communicate it was actually these installations outdoors.
Sachdev highlighted a majority of people are engaging with the idea on digital, even though it's a physical idea, and that is Puma’s concept with any outdoor installation.
The brand rarely does outdoor advertising since all of their audience is on digital but when they do invest in any outdoor, the thought process is always that the idea should be so unique that there is chatter on digital platforms and it reaches people who have not seen it live, she shared.
Out of home is less about reaching the people who physically see it and more about a great idea that kind of transcends across platforms, according to her.
Now, given the brand that Puma is with a young new age audience, digital has always been and will always be the brand’s primary medium, she said. This is because the ROI on digital and the ability to see end to end impact is amazing. It's the only platform where you understand the consumer journey and the funnel 100%.
The billboards are featured only in Mumbai and that has been done because of the scale that they're trying to communicate and for practical concerns they had to limit it to Mumbai, shared Sachdev. Like heights of buildings and permissions to actually put up such large installations or to wrap an entire train was more feasible in Mumbai.
“I guess Mumbai is a city where people are used to advertising activity and hence the ability to find the right locations, get the right permissions, do the communication in a way that does it justice was possible only in Mumbai.”
The IOA partnership fit in well with the brand’s ethos as they believe in supporting sport at all levels, shared the executive. “We want to support grassroot, amateur, elite sports enthusiasts. Hence, we supported NGOs like supporting women from slums to play football. Our ‘Let There Be Sport’ campaign which was released last year actually encouraged amateurs and people at large to pick up sport because we kind of realised that the value that sport has is not just limited to physical benefit. There's a lot that you learn from sport that you can't really learn from a textbook.”
In the Olympics itself, Puma India has about 45 athletes on-board and is further signing a couple more, which will make it more than 40% of the contingent across nine sports.
This is helping the brand at a larger level with recall value, top of the mind, brand affinity rising year on year. Sachdev shared, “People do recognise and identify us as the brand that is out there to support sport in all and every way.”
