Truly Deeply/Madly

All Brands Have Mean­ing
Whether care­fully and strate­gi­cally con­sid­ered or by default, all brands hold asso­ci­ated mean­ings in the minds of the mar­ket place. Well con­sid­ered brands estab­lish a com­pet­i­tive brand propo­si­tion (their brand strat­egy) with lay­ers of mean­ing to both dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from their com­peti­tors and to con­nect with their audi­ence. These brands rein­force their mean­ing through all of their actions or brand touch points and their brand design. As a brand agency we help brands to define their mean­ing and cre­ate their unique brand design for all their com­mu­ni­ca­tions in order to cre­ate a con­sis­tent asso­ci­a­tion with these lay­ers of mean­ing in the hearts and minds of their customers.

adi­das Vs Nike
Today we com­pare the brand asso­ci­a­tions of spots apparel icons adi­das & Nike.

A Snap­shot of Brand Asso­ci­a­tion
The clever peo­ple at Brand Tags have been busy col­lect­ing a com­pre­hen­sive list of more than 1.7 mil­lion asso­ci­a­tions that peo­ple from around the globe have with brands. The result is a unique oppor­tu­nity for those brands to com­pare the mean­ing and mes­sages of their brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­egy with the brand asso­ci­a­tions of a cross sec­tion of the market.

A Com­par­i­son of Brand Asso­ci­a­tions
As to be expected, both brands have a high level of asso­ci­a­tion with terms such as ‘shoes’ and ‘sports’, but inter­est­ingly, from their they depart into some inter­est­ing and dif­fer­en­ti­ated ter­ri­tory. Both by design and through unin­tended asso­ci­a­tion, the two sports apparel brands have quite dis­tinc­tive mean­ings with the mar­ket. Inter­est­ingly adi­das’ Ger­man her­itage has a strong asso­ci­a­tion, where-as Nike is seen as a global brand with­out a clear link to any par­tic­u­lar coun­try.
What I find most astound­ing is given the insane amount of invest­ment these two brands, but espe­cially Nike plow into endorse­ments for the high­est pro­file ath­letes on the planet, only Nike with Jor­dan at No.8 retain any sig­nif­i­cant brand asso­ci­a­tion rel­a­tive to these other more dom­i­nant associations.

The adi­das Brand
adi­das is clearly asso­ci­ated with soc­cer. The pre­dom­i­nance of the asso­ci­a­tion with the word ‘soc­cer’ sug­gests the asso­ci­a­tions have a North Amer­i­can (and pos­si­bly Aus­tralian) skew as most of the globe refers to the world game as foot­ball. Per­haps as a result of its Euro­pean (Ger­man) her­itage — cer­tainly be strate­gic design, adi­das (always spelled with a lower case ‘a’) has a stronger link to foot­ball than to any other sport. adi­das’ Ger­man her­itage too is rec­og­nized with a strong asso­ci­a­tion, link­ing the brand to the pos­i­tive aspects of qual­ity and Euro­pean his­tory.
The first asso­ci­a­tion with adi­das’ visual lan­guage comes-in at brand asso­ci­a­tion No. 7 with the word ‘stripes’. This sug­gests adi­das has the poten­tial to strengthen the role their stipes plays in theri brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion to increase the level of asso­ci­a­tion with their pro­pri­etary visual property.

The most dis­tinc­tively unique asso­ci­a­tions with the adi­das brand flow from the foun­tain of cool. With the asso­ci­a­tion of ‘sneak­ers’ and No.4 and ‘Cool’ at No.6 we get a sense of the level of cred adi­das has devel­oped strate­gi­cally over the years. Fur­ther asso­ci­a­tion with Rap­pers Run DMC is reflected fur­ther down the list of brand asso­ci­a­tions due to the pref­er­ence of Run DMC for wear­ing the sports shoe and their track; ‘My adi­das’.
adi­das con­tinue to imbue their brand with cool through cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tions with musi­cians and artistssuch as long­time part­ner, French artist Fafi. Using adi­das prod­ucts as the can­vas for her well-known, whim­si­cal graph­ics, Fafi brings her street styles to an adi­das range of footwear and apparel for girls.

adi­das has also been active in the explo­ration of cut­ting edge tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate cool brand expe­ri­ences like their cur­rent augm­neted real­ity cam­paign for their Orig­i­nals range.
Inter­est­ingly also with a high level of asso­ci­a­tion is Korn’s ‘All Day I Dream About Sex’. Although rumored to have a con­nec­tion with adi­das (the acronym of the track is A.D.I.D.A.S.) the band has always stead­fastly denied any intended ref­er­ence. How­ever, the brand seems to have ben­e­fited from the asso­ci­a­tion regardless.

The Nike Brand
The asso­ci­a­tion of the Nike brand are enough to make any brand designer proud as punch. The two strongest Nike brand asso­ci­a­tions are ‘Swoosh’ and ‘Just do it’, reflect­ing just how effec­tive Nike has been in estab­lish­ing and own­ing these two unique brand prop­er­ties. Regard­less of what fol­lows, we have to acknowl­edge any brand who achieves that level of recog­ni­tion of iden­tity and posi­tion­ing.

Unfor­tu­nately for Nike, the brand asso­ci­a­tions of ‘Sweat­shop’ and Child Labor’ con­tinue to fea­ture promi­nently. Regard­less of the invest­ment Nike has made into high pro­file ath­lete endorse­ments it seems there’s no avoid­ing the actions of a brand beyond their brand com­mu­ni­ca­tions, espe­cially when those actions are seen to clash with social stan­dards.

The Nike brand has a clear asso­ci­a­tion to Michael Jor­dan, which is one more ath­lete than the adi­das brand. How­ever, given the amount of money Nike invests into ath­lete endorse­ment, and the fact that even high pro­file sports­men such as Tiger Woods don’t rate a men­tion in this broad sam­ple of brand asso­ci­a­tions sug­gests the old, endorsement-heavy approach of vir­tu­ally all the sports brands may be call­ing fo a re-think.

If you’d like some help to define the mean­ing for your brand and cre­ate your com­mu­ni­ca­tions in order to cre­ate a con­sis­tent asso­ci­a­tion with these lay­ers of mean­ing in the minds of their cus­tomers, why not drop us a line?

David Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
For reg­u­lar updates of our brand think­ing fol­low me on Twit­ter.
Brand Designers

Tags: adidas, adidas-originals, Advertising, augmented-reality, Authentic, Brand Agency, brand association, Brand Design, brand designer, brand designer Melbourne, Brand Experience, brandamentalist, Corporate Image, Dave Ansett, David Ansett, fafi, Graphic Design Melbourne, Jordan, jordan ad, just do it, Korn A.D.I.D.A.S., Melbourne Brand Strategy, my adidas, Nike, nike ad, Run DMC, shoes, soccer, stripes, sweatshop, swoosh, Tiger-Woods

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 9:05 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Brand-Storytelling, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.