Business Communication: Formulating an Ad Campaign for Adidas Shoes

This business communication assignment focuses on formulating an ad campaign for Adidas shoes. The student conducts extensive research on the company background and products, and learns about integrated marketing communication, positioning, media channels, touch points, and communication process. The presentation includes a situation analysis, company analysis, advertising plan, and an example of an advertisement campaign. The student reflects on the experience and the importance of self-evaluation.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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When I first received the assignment in my class, I was very excited as this is a very
creative and innovate topic which would enable me to give my inputs and views. I wanted to
do this assignment to the best of my abilities. As soon as I got back from school, I launched
into a full research about the topic and the requirements of the same that would help me to
construct a full proof advertisement campaign for any product. The initial difficulty was to
choose a product. I went through the internet for a long time but could not decide on any
product which I would love to make an ad campaign on. After searching for a very long time,
I shortlisted three products on which I would like to make my ad campaign. The products
were shoes, watches and mobile. I chose shoes because they were my most favorite product
among the three. I decided that I wanted to make an ad campaign on the shoes of the famous
brand Adidas. After I finalized the product that is when the interesting part started. I went
into an extensive research on the company background and the products that it manufactured
and sold. As I went into a deeper research about the company, I realized that there was a lot
of information that I did not know about.
The company first started in Bavaria in Germany which was a small town, by Adi
Dassler. He started the company with the aim to provide every athlete with the best sports
equipment that would be possible. He first named the company Dassler Brothers Shoe
Factory in the year 1924. The company received two gold medals at the beginning of their
journey, the first one in Amsterdam in the year 1928 and the second in Berlin, in the year
1936. All of these information was new to me, as I had always worn the products of this
brand, but never really felt the need to do any research on it. This assignment have helped me
to gain new knowledge about a brand which I had worn and heard about but have never
received any concrete information about their inception or their achievements and operations.
The current headquarter of the company is in Herzogenaurach, Germany. They have a global
customer base and is currently one of the top players in the sector of sports apparel. I was

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able to gain new insights about the journey of Adidas, the way in which the company started
from the wash kitchen of Adi Dassler’s mother and went on to become a global player. All
this new information made me amazed and inspired by the person who was able to conquer
the whole world with his views and work. I was so amazed by the journey, that I was
determined in my mind that I would be successful in every task that I take on so that I can
someday see myself in the same position as Adi Dassler and so that I am able to do
something good and extraordinary with my life.
After conducting a research about the company, I prepared a framework for the
presentation that I had to prepare regarding the ad campaign. I had studied about this subject
in my class but have never really made one all by myself. This is why I had to search several
examples of ad campaign which would enable me to make a concrete ad campaign which if
ever used would help in a successful campaign by the company and also get me good marks
for the time being. I firstly had to get a clear understanding on the meaning and the
requirements of an ad campaign and the necessary topics that would have to be completed
under the same. An advertising campaign means that there is a series of messages for the
advertisement that would have a single theme or view (Parente & Strausbaugh-Hutchinson,
2014). The ad campaign would use various channels of media within a stipulated time frame
and will target the specific audience according to the price and the customer base of the
company. The need for an ad campaign by a company is to fulfil the objectives of the
company and which will help to establish the brand name and increase the brand value in the
market. Ad campaigns are needed to attract the customers towards the products and the
services of the company. The failure and the success of a company’s products and services
would depend somewhat on the formulation of a concrete and well defined ad campaign that
would be successful in bring in the desired customer base in the company and to make sure
that they purchase the products.

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I learnt that there are five key aspects of an advertising campaign which should give
an efficient and effective result of the campaign. These 5 key aspects are integrated
marketing communication or IMC, positioning of the products, the various media channels,
the touch points which would show the way that the consumer will be able to interact with
the business or the company and the diagram for communications process. Integrated
marketing communication is a concept which is used by almost every company so that they
are able to develop a plan which would help them to form a successful advertising and
marketing campaign (Juska, 2017). Media channels are the communication channels through
which the company would be able to reach their target customers. The most common media
channels of communication are radio, newspapers, television, telephone, magazines, internet
and others (Chakraborty et al., 2016). The positioning of the product would depend on the
company’s target base of customers and the people, who the company knows would have the
capacity and the capability to purchase their product (Weinstein, 2013). Touch points are the
different points of contact that would be available between the customer and the company.
With the advent of technology it has become easier for the customers to come in contact with
the company and to share their views and feedbacks (McColl-Kennedy et al., 2015). Finally
the diagram of communication process is the way the operations of the ad campaign would
occur so that a smooth flow is ensured in the communication process between the company
and the consumer (Rowley, 2016).
After I gained a clear insight about the requirements of an ad campaign, I realized that
it would be much easier for me to make the desired framework for the formulation of the ad
campaign of Adidas shoes. The assignment that I have been given by my lecturer was to
formulate an ad campaign for a product which could be either real or imaginary and to
prepare a presentation for the same. The presentation of the ad campaign would constitute of
the following sections. The first slide would contain a short introduction of the company

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which would help the viewer to get a basic but important background about the company
whose product I would be using for the ad campaign. The second section would contain the
basic framework for the ad campaign which would contain the four sections which first needs
to be analyzed to create the perfect campaign. The four sections are a situation analysis of the
company, a company analysis, an advertising plan and the ways that the advertising plan can
be implemented in the market. The situation analysis of the company consists of two parts
which are the market analysis and competitive analysis. The market analysis is the different
segmentation of the market and the customer base that they are targeting in the segments. The
segments are based on geographical, psychographic, behavioral and demographic aspects.
The second part of the situation analysis is competitive analysis which will show the position
of the company and their competitors based on the income of the people in the market.
The company analysis would consist of the mission, vision and objectives of the
company. In my presentation I would describe the mission and vision of the Adidas, along
with the financial and strategic objective of the company. There will also be a SWOT
analysis of the company that would be placed under the company analysis so that a clear idea
is available to me about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats that the
company is facing in the market before I start to design the ad campaign. The SWOT analysis
is a very important part of a company as it helps to understand the shortcomings of the
company along with the advantages and the good aspects of the company (Bull et al., 2016).
Understanding both the pros and cons of the company will help me to decide the ad campaign
in a proper way so that it does backfire to the company and appeals to majority of the
customer base. This is the part after which I would start my advertising plan and advertising
campaign which is the main requirement of the assignment that have been given to me. I will
further be able to move on with the rest of my assignment after this analysis.

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The section of advertising campaign plan would include a lot of sub sections which
would be used to clearly formulate the whole assignment. Firstly, it would contain the
marketing plan which would include the strategies that would be used under the four Ps of
marketing which are product, place, price, promotion. This is the section of the integrated
marketing communication part. Secondly, the positioning of the product would be discussed
under the advertising campaign plan. The positioning of the product would be based on the
target customers and their income so that the products are placed in such a way so as to get
the most sales from the area. Thirdly, the media channels of that product have to be
established which means that the different channels through which the advertisement would
be made available to the customers will be established in this section. Fourthly, the touch
points which are the different points of contact between the company and the consumer.
These touch points are set to create value for in the relationship that exists between the
company product and the customer who would purchase the product. Lastly, the advertising
plan would contain the diagram for the communication process which would contain all the
steps of communication that needs to be made available to the customer and the company.
This diagram is used by the company to ensure that all the communications are been
mandatorily made so that nothing is missed as this would create a great impact on the
company.
The final slide of the presentation would contain an example of an advertisement
campaign which have been done by the company and which I have used as a source for my
ad campaign design. This presentation and assignment have led me to learn a lot of new
things which would help me in my future assignments and also in my life. I had to conduct
extensive research during my assignment and this has led me to learn new things which can
be further used in my other assignments and tasks. I have come to realize that doing research
about any topic would help to incur more knowledge and information and expand my area of

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know how. Even though I was very excited when I received the project because I was about
to do something new, I knew that I would face a lot of hardships while doing so because of
the density of the research that would have to conduct to make this project a successful one. I
knew that this research would take up a lot of my time and I might have to work a lot so that I
am able to complete the project on time and give a good solution to my lecturer which will
get me good marks in return. However, I was so excited with the topic that I did not feel the
need to lag behind or leave my project incomplete, not just for the marks which was
important, but also because I was excited to learn something new in the tenure of my
education.
I feel that is important for every student to self-evaluate the work that they are doing
in order to understand the quality of their writing and to understand if the effort that they are
putting into the work is enough to get the work done in the given time frame or not, without
compromising the quality of the work. At the beginning of my presentation I faced a lot of
issues which sometimes led me to stop the work and felt like I would not be able to continue
doing it. This was due to certain lack of information or even the way the assignment took up
most of my time and I was not able to do anything else. The way my lecturer had explained
the module to me made it very easy for me to understand the basics of the subject. However,
there is also a lot of information which would have been possible for the lecturer to cover in
the model and would have to be done by myself only. I did not want to take the help of any of
my peers to do the assignment as I wanted to see my capability in completing the project.
After a certain time, when I reached the middle of the project, it became a lot easier for me to
complete it since I have now got used to the theme and the ideas of the advertising campaign
and the path that I would have to take so that my project is easily competed in the given time.
I figured that when I try to struggles less with my project, I am able to give better
results as the stress is reduced. Stress is the main reason that sometimes I face difficulty in

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completing the assignment. I have also realized that it takes me much lesser time to complete
written word assignment and more time to create PowerPoint presentations even though they
are much smaller in quantity. This is because PowerPoint are not elaborative like word
assignment, however, it is necessary that they contain the most important information which
would enable the viewer to understand the whole topic without having to explain elaborately.
Moreover, since I was designing an ad campaign, I had to keep in mind that I covered all the
aspects of a successful ad campaign and also make it attractive to the viewer. If any of the
points are missed out it would put a huge impact on the presentation and the results.
However, I had a very good experience while doing my work as I was able to learn new
things and also was able to understand the limit of my creativity and ability to do a work
alone without anybody’s help. I knew that the results that I would receive would solely be on
my merit and my hard work. I would also love to do similar projects on my future times. I
would also take into consideration the feedbacks and comments that would be given by my
lecturer for my future work.

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References
Bull, J. W., Jobstvogt, N., Böhnke-Henrichs, A., Mascarenhas, A., Sitas, N., Baulcomb, C., ...
& Carter-Silk, E. (2016). Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats: A
SWOT analysis of the ecosystem services framework. Ecosystem Services, 17, 99-
111.
Chakraborty, A., Ghosh, S., Ganguly, N., & Gummadi, K. P. (2016, January). Dissemination
Biases of Social Media Channels: On the Topical Coverage of Socially Shared News.
In ICWSM (pp. 559-562).
Juska, J. M. (2017). Integrated Marketing Communication. Taylor & Francis.
McColl-Kennedy, J. R., Gustafsson, A., Jaakkola, E., Klaus, P., Radnor, Z. J., Perks, H., &
Friman, M. (2015). Fresh perspectives on customer experience. Journal of Services
Marketing, 29(6/7), 430-435.
Parente, D., & Strausbaugh-Hutchinson, K. (2014). Advertising campaign strategy: A guide
to marketing communication plans. Cengage Learning.
Rowley, J. (2016). Information marketing. Routledge.
Weinstein, A. (2013). Handbook of market segmentation: Strategic targeting for business and
technology firms. Routledge.

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Appendix
Babin, B. J., & Zikmund, W. G. (2015). Exploring marketing research. Cengage Learning.
Belch, G. E., Belch, M. A., Kerr, G. F., & Powell, I. (2014). Advertising: An integrated
marketing communication perspective. McGraw-Hill Education.
Dhebar, A. (2013). Toward a compelling customer touchpoint architecture. Business
Horizons, 56(2), 199-205.
Fleisher, C. S., & Bensoussan, B. E. (2015). Business and competitive analysis: effective
application of new and classic methods. FT Press.
McQuail, D., & Windahl, S. (2015). Communication models for the study of mass
communications. Routledge.
Men, L. R. (2014). Strategic internal communication: Transformational leadership,
communication channels, and employee satisfaction. Management Communication
Quarterly, 28(2), 264-284.
Proctor, T. (2014). Strategic marketing: an introduction. Routledge.
Rothaermel, F. T. (2015). Strategic management. McGraw-Hill Education.