Adidas Amps Up Digital Dreams

Adidas amps up its marketing strategy with an ambitious new five-year plan.

The athletic apparel brand is aiming for increased sales and increased sustainability with its new plan, which targets up to 10% annual growth through 2025. In addition to a new stream of sustainably-made sneakers and apparel, Adidas expects a surge in online sales, with especially robust growth in women’s products. After falling a bit short last year as a result of the pandemic, the brand isn’t afraid to make great strides in the next five years, even if it also means making great changes. For example, after 15 years of trying to bring the spark back to Reebok, which it acquired for $3.8 billion, Adidas plans to cut ties with the British label—even though it recently displayed promising potential to be Hollywood’s next “It” shoe. The brand will also bulk up its profile by investing more than 1 billion euros in digital technology including 3D design, sourcing of supplies and advertisement efforts, and targets for nine out of ten articles to be sustainably produced by the end of the five years.

Diving deeper into the digital game is a bright move for any brand aiming to power into in the post-pandemic world. It’s also something Adidas has been pumping into its marketing mix since last year, when it boasted the most engaged Instagram communities across profiles and saw the highest increase in app usership after rebooting its shopping app in 2018. These efforts helped the brand significantly and enabled to tie for first place for the first time with longtime frontrunner Nike in Gartner’s Digital IQ Index: Activewear. Its engaged community continues to fuel high site traffic, second only to Nike in monthly site traffic across desktop and mobile. As consumers continue to crave brands with real purpose, spending more time and resources on sustainability could also cue long-term success for Adidas. As for expecting growth in the women’s sector, the label isn’t the only brand betting on the demographic. Nike recently rolled out its maternity line and matching star-studded campaign.