Analysis of Under Armour's Digital and Direct Marketing Strategies

This report analyzes the digital and direct marketing strategies of Under Armour, a prominent sportswear company. It begins by identifying the challenges Under Armour faced, including competition from established brands like Nike and Adidas, and the need to refine their promotional approach. The report then discusses the importance of these issues and explores various solutions, such as focusing on specific customer segments and leveraging social media. It highlights the successful implementation of the "I Will What I Want" campaign and its impact on brand promotion and revenue generation. The report also examines the use of digital tools and promotional strategies to achieve marketing goals, providing a comprehensive overview of Under Armour's approach to navigating the competitive sportswear market and building brand recognition.

Digital and Direct
Marketing Strategy

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Issues faced by the company.......................................................................................................1
Importance of these issues..........................................................................................................2
Various solutions for the above issues........................................................................................3
Implementation of the solutions..................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
In this article, it will be discussing about the introduction of the sportswear company
having a brand name “Under Armour”. The following report will also be focusing towards the
various issues which were faced by the company in this competitive market and about various
promotional and marketing techniques which were used by the organisation. In 1996, the brand
Under Armour was launched having a main motive to replace the sweaty cotton shirts and under-
worn footballs pads with their sportswear material and to this they had launched various products
in men and women's range.
This sportswear company was launched by Kelvin Plank in 1996, having their major aim
to become the biggest sports and Gym wear brand in all over the world. Under Armour
standardised their brand in 1999 after having the contract from Warner Brother to feature their
film with their clothing products (Lewis and Porter, 2010). After that in less than two decades
Under Armour had become a popular brand and introduced its various other brand products like
shorts, shoes, etc., and had become a global business with less than $4 billion sales. In the end of
2013, the company had also extended the products like shoes, shorts and other varieties in their
clothing like Slim fit t-shirt, shorts and a huge assortment to the range of their Gym wear.
Issues faced by the company
The major issues which were faced by the organisation, was the introduction of their
products in that there are huge competitors which grab their market share. The company was
having their rivals which were already having a very big name in the market, such as Nike,
Adidas and other big brands as compared to the Under Armour at that time, these big brands had
already settled their position in the market and it was a big challenge to compete in that market
and enhance their brand products.
In addition to all this, it was a big challenge to the company to decide the way of their
business promotion (Rosenau and Wilson, 2014). The organisation was also having various
issues to decide their focus to the way of promotion either it may be through the advertisement
activities by endorsing celebrities or with the help of social media and other artists.
Other than this the company has to study the market and have to get every single detail
about their current market. After having a detailed study Under Armour, the researcher came to
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know about that, the company only use to sell the products of women range and due to that they
generate high revenue.
In order to achieve that profit, organisation has to introduced their largest global women's
marketing campaign at the cost of $15 million dollars as “I Will What I Want”.
Other than this the article is also throwing light on various issues which were faced by
other companies like Adidas which was ranking number second in the market of sportswear at
US, Adidas had launched their product “Unite All Originals” which was targeting women by
using the popular artists who are active on social media, but this advertisement campaign
gathered only 400,000 views on YouTube and resulted to no gain in their sales and have large
loose of their profit and productivity to Adidas. Later in context to this, Under Armour also
decided to major target over their sales in women's market and for this they have launched a new
campaign, “I Will What I Want”. (Unlucan, 2014). For the promotion of this campaign the
company had faced various issues such as, Under Armour had decided to organise the promotion
of their brand at multichannel platforms and major on social media where it is very difficult to
decide particular area of promotion such as blogs and pages to attract larger number of
customers.
The company also has to deal with the introduction of new small companies in the market
which indirectly affects the base sale of Under Armour. Introduction of the companies like
“Lululemon athletica” and others are making huge profit to them, because of their low prices and
resulting immense loss in the sales of these big product brands. In 2014, their Lululemon revenue
was $1.8 billion.
Importance of these issues
These above discussed issues had resulted in great loss to these organisations. But these
issues also positively impacted on the business growth of the company. With continuous
introduction of these various issues, company has to work in progressive direction and the
employees need to work in the fruitful manner in order to deal and overcome such issues (Song
and et.al., 2011). It encourages the sense of trust between the employees and management team
of the company which helps them to deal their future issues and problem with positive attitude
and in progressive direction.
In addition to this, it produces more products which help them to grab large market share
and gain competitive advantage market. Similar case was applied in case of Adidas and Under
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Armour, where when Adidas was facing issues to produce their women's products in the market
and fails to encourage their products with the help of their social media advertisement, Under
Armour replaced their idea with the introduction of their own women's products with proper
techniques for its marketing and promotion. This produces huge profit and raise in the brand
image Under Armour company.
Various solutions for the above issues
For the proper introduction of new brand's products, the company should implement
proper techniques of the promotion, in context to this they should firstly have to decide most
appropriate ways of their promotion such as with the help of social media, television, and other
sources of media (Desbordes and Richelieu, 2012). After, this the companies should analyse
about their potential customers and should only put their efforts on that particular range of
customers which will result in huge profit with less investment.
In order to the deal with big brands which were already existing in the market like Nike,
Adidas, Under Armour should focus toward their limitation and having full study on the
feedbacks of customers produce those products in the market. In order to face the issues which is
related to the promotion such by endorsing celebrities and other social media platforms, so the
company should focus on different platforms of social media and other artist instead of endorsing
popular artists. From the case given in the article. It is studied that only 7% of the viewer were
able to remember which brand which was associate with that famous advertisement in that the
only thing they remember was the appearance of celebrity in the brand (Abreu and et.al., 2011).
Under Armour should majorly focus toward the word of mouth way of viral marketing,
the big reason behind the success of this marketing techniques is in the clothing industry around
92% of customers believes in recommendations from their family and friends instead of
marketing from the advertisement and other activities (How Under Armour plans to become the
world’s biggest sports brand, 2016).
Implementation of the solutions
For successful promotion of the “ I Will What I Want” campaign the management team
and promotional manager along with Kelvin Plank had produced 5 billion media impressions all
over the world for the promotion and as a result it has produced huge profit of $35 million, in
context to this case Adrienne Lofton, who was the senior vice president of the Global marketing
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of brands at Under Armour said that “ I will what I want” was the most successful and highest
earned campaign the company had ever done (Shank and Lyberger, 2014).
Figure 1: Digital tools
(Source: Ann, 2016)
Other than this company had featured this campaign with the help of American Ballet
Theatre, where many of the potential customers came to know about their Brand and products, in
the same case the company had used Misty Copeland as their brand promoter which raised the
sense of positively pleased thinking in the mind of their customers because in that function she
told about how she was rejected by the top ballet academy at the age of 13 years giving a reason
that she is having a wrong body for the ballet where she disproved them by becoming beautiful
and powerful dancer and the soloist at the same ballet. She was assigned the different activities
of advertisement which was created for the television, prints and the digital space and it was
successful in all three targets, that advertisement also went viral on YouTube having more than 4
million views (Boone and Kurtz, 2013). The company should imply their solutions to the rising
issues by proper analysing of the competitive landscape and majorly focusing towards the word
of mouth way of promotion. With the help of this successful marketing campaign, company
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would be able to achieve their set aims and objectives to become $10 billion brand by the end of
2020
Figure 2: Promotion solution
(Source: Samiksha, 2013)
CONCLUSION
The above article report is focusing toward the Under-Armour company and the issues
which was faced by the company in order to the become the second largest sportswear brand in
America. It is also throwing light on the various issues which company had faced during the
marketing and introduction of their products. In addition to this, the report is also giving some
concept about the importance of issues raising during the functioning of the company and about
the various solution which were implemented by the company to come over those issues.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Abreu, M. J. A. M. and et.al., 2011. Effects of sportswear design on thermal comfort. In 11th
World Textile Conference Autex 2011. (pp. 50-55).
Boone, L. E. and Kurtz, D. L., 2013. Contemporary marketing. Cengage learning.
Desbordes, M. and Richelieu, A. eds., 2012. Global sport marketing: Contemporary issues and
practice. Routledge.
Lewis, B. and Porter, L., 2010. In-game advertising effects: Examining player perceptions of
advertising schema congruity in a massively multiplayer online role-playing
game. Journal of Interactive Advertising. 10(2). pp.46-60.
Rosenau, J. A. and Wilson, D.L., 2014. Apparel merchandising: The line starts here. A&C
Black.
Shank, M. D. and Lyberger, M. R., 2014. Sports marketing: A strategic perspective. Routledge.
Song, G. ed., 2011. Improving comfort in clothing. Elsevier.
Unlucan, D., 2014. Jersey manufacturers in football/soccer: the analysis of current jersey
manufacturers of 1061 football/soccer clubs in top leagues of 72 countries. Soccer &
Society. 15(3). pp.314-333.
Online
Ann, M., 2016. Digital marketing tools. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/10-go-digital-marketing-tools-
01532038#zf3sObrjfRXXcFFd.97>. [Accessed on 6th September 2017].
How Under Armour plans to become the world’s biggest sports brand, 2016. [Online]. Available
through: <https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/05/04/how-under-armour-plans-to-
become-the-worlds-biggest-sports-brand/>. [Accessed on 6th September 2017].
Samiksha, S., 2013. Most important for promotion. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/marketing/4-most-important-elements-of-promotion-
mix-business-marketing/8796/>. [Accessed on 6th September 2017].
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