N America News April 2017

8 NORTH AMERICA NEWS / APRIL 2017 , PUMA is one of the world’s leading Sports Brands, designing, developing, selling and marketing footwear, apparel and accessories. We invited Senior Director of Brand and Marketing Allison Giorgio to the secrets behind the company’s success and how its recent campaigns have led Corp AmericaMagazine to award her team ‘Most Innovative PR & Marketing Team’. PUMA: The Big Cat Becomes the Top Dog in Sportswear For over 65 years, PUMA has established a history of making fast product designs for the fastest athletes on the planet. PUMA offers performance and sport-inspired lifestyle products in categories such as soccer, running, training and fitness, golf, sport style and motorsports. It engages in exciting collaborations with renowned design brands such as Alexander McQueen and Mihara Yasuhiro to bring innovative and fast designs to the sports world. The company distributes its products in more than 120 countries, employs more than 10,000 people worldwide, and is headquartered in Herzogenaurach, Germany. In order to ensure the continued success of the company, its marketing department works diligently to create marketing and branding materials that drive engagement and reaches its target market, as Allison outlines. “The simple goal for the marketing organization in PUMA North America is to create a real connection between our customers, the PUMA brand and our product. We focus on delivering great stories with a clear communication strategy that makes people feel part of the PUMA brand. To achieve this, we utilize disruptive marketing efforts that break through the clutter while always keeping our product and brand values at the core. “As a team we are responsible for the ideation, creation and implementation of our marketing strategy and efforts across all channels of distribution and all areas of marketing communication that ultimately creates demand and provides a valuable and memorable experience for our North American customers.” It is PUMA North America brand values which differentiate them from its competitors and mark it out as THE supplier of sportswear for its clients, as Allison is keen to highlight. “As a leading sportswear brand there is a lot of competition in the marketplace, PUMA stands out from the pack by staying true to our brand values. We have a long history in sport but our design DNA helps us to have a unique proposition for our customer by producing trend relevant footwear, apparel and accessories for our consumers. As marketers we highlight the same areas and key principals of our brand with every activation and communication that we produce. We try and bring our consumers a true brand experience rather than just messaging. Bringing the consumer closer to our brand is our ultimate goal. “To help us reach this goal, our brand mantra changed a few years back to “Forever Faster”. The change was significant as it clearly indicated that PUMA had a desire to be the fastest sports brand in the world. It is our brand platform, but is also a true company mentality. It signifies our commitment to quickly identifying product designs, trends, styles and bringing them to market in a dynamic way. It encompasses PUMA’s history of being a brand that embraces the thrill of being first, the swagger of being the best and the joy that being fast offers. These principles have been a long-standing part of PUMA and have guided our most recent efforts whether that be through our ambassador collaborations, our athlete endorsements or our marketing campaigns and activations.” Overall moving forward, Allison believes that the brand will remain PUMA’s firm focus as it seeks to innovative and create consumer engagement through partnerships with some of the leading faces from across the entertainment and fashion market. “Ultimately, our brand was in a very different place a few years ago, but the momentum we have created by refining our brand positioning, creating great new products and working with some of the biggest names in the sports and entertainment industry has put us on a new trajectory. A well-known turning point was signing Rihanna as one of the brands Creative Directors. Rihanna’s ability to span fashion, athleisure and street wear coupled with her attitude and unapologetic approach to life made her a natural choice to be one of PUMA’s creative director’s. She has got the attitude we want to embody as a brand and has done an unbelievable job working with us to create fashionable yet comfortable product that both women and men are clamouring to get. 1612CA32