Reebok Case Study

1 Introduction

The form of advertising and marketing has dramatically changed over the years given that social media has become an integral part of day-to-day life. In this regard, information has become much more accessible to people through such social media vehicles as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, QQ, Qzone and many more. This form of media has allowed people to connect and share information with one another across “political, economic and geographic boarders” (“Social Networking Statistics,” 2012). Thus creating one environment upon which organizations are able to advertise within and reach a much larger consumer base.

More and more people are adopting social media as their main form of communication, and as at 2012 all the statistical data demonstrates that this marketplace and communication method has been growing for many years.

As at March 2012, Facebook had approximately 900 million users, which has now increased to 1 billion users as at December 2012 (How Many People Use the Top Social Media, 2012 and 20 Interesting Facts, 2012). Given that there are approximately 7 billion people on this planet, there is still a lot of room for these figures to exponentially grow (20 Interesting Facts, 2012).

(Yung-Hui, 2012)

This growth can also be seen in other social media vehicles such as Twitter, where there are 500 million users, QQ with 700 million users, Google+ with 400 million users and even YouTube, which has 4 billion views per day (How Many People Use the Top Social Media, 2012, Bullas, 2012 and YouTube Statistics, 2012).

Given this growing marketplace, many companies are advertising through these vehicles and one of these technological means of advertising is through ‘viral marketing’. Many companies such as Nike, Adidas, Budweiser and Reebok all use this form of advertising, but for the purpose of this paper, we will be concentrating on Reebok’s marketing strategies.

In 1890 Reebok International was founded and over time had become a household name in the athletic footwear and apparel industry. In 2003 Reebok made $3,485 billion and was a leading force in its industry. Its major competitors were Nike and Adidas (Zerio, 2007, pp2-3).

For the purpose of this paper we will look at the marketing techniques used by Reebok in 2003 and also how and why these strategies were implemented. This paper will then answer the question of whether these strategies can be seen to be successful, given that one of Reeboks largest competitors, Adidas, acquired Reebok on 31 January 2006 (adidas-Soloman, 2006).

2 Viral Marketing

The fundamental principle behind a viral marketing strategy that is used by companies is to encourage individuals to pass on a