The ads fell flat, and Reebok sales did not rise appreciably. The lesson, which Reebok has taken to heart, is that in sneaker advertising, sweat outsells style.
The net result of all this is that advertising budgets have soared. Gear, $25 million. Nike estimates it will spend some $70 million on advertising in 1990 and another $25 to $30 million on promotions: sponsoring races, hosting high school all-star clinics and outfitting college basketball teams.
Those costs, obviously, are passed on to the consumer. It costs only $15 or $20 to manufacture a pair of sneakers that retails for $60 to $100. The rest is profit and promotional hype. Still, sneaker sales grew approximately 23% a year between 1985 and '89. "Ten years ago, people had an average of 1.2 pairs of athletic shoes in their closets," says Fireman. "In 1987, Reebok customers nike free run owned nike air max 90 an average of 4.5 pairs. By the mid-'90s those same customers will own shop jordan six to six and a half different pairs of sneakers apiece. Footwear will no longer be an accessory, it will be the main course. People will buy outfits to match their shoes. Kids will wear a different pair of sneakers to school every day, depending on their mood."
This rococo projection of 21st-century life is a parent's vision of hell. timberlands shop isabel marant But it may be on target. "Kids don't have the ability to buy a BMW," says Reebok's chief of marketing, John Morgan, "so shop isabel marant they make their fashion statements with their feet."
Critics have assailed the sneaker companies for exploiting this circumstance. Some have even accused the companies of luring inner-city kids-who wear flashy attire to earn acceptance as big guys on the block-into the drug trade by pricing top-of-the-line sneaker models from $125 to $175. Certainly a few recent ads have been in questionable taste. One Reebok Pump promotional video had Glenn (Doc) Rivers of the Atlanta Hawks saying isabel marant sneakers he could use the Pump to "intimidate people," while a black youth said, "If somebody sees these shoes, they're like, whewww, where did you get these? You must be bad or something." Bad, in this case, does not mean good. Gear put out a poster of the Lakers' Mychal Thompson isabel marant store wearing its sneakers and carrying, ahem, a machine gun.
As you might expect, the sneaker companies deny that they target inner-city kids any more than they target kids in, say, rural Indiana. "Our higher-end shoes are basketball shoes," says Nike's marketing chief, Tom Clarke, "and basketball is in its highest art form in the inner city. The fact that our shoes sell well there is a function of how important basketball is to those communities." Convinced now?
Six years ago virtually every player in the NBA had an endorsement contract that paid him anywhere from $1,000 to $500,000 to wear a particular brand of sneakers. Odds were that brand was Nike, which in 1984 shelled out free shoes and cash to 135 of the NBA's 273 players. But cheap nike free run times and marketing strategies have changed. These days Nike has only 30 NBA players under contract. "You don't need every player on the bench," says Dolan. "There are so many people endorsing things that the consumer has gotten jaded. Does anyone really believe that Tip O'Neill stays in those Quality Inns? So we've decided to get a few great players and to do a lot with them."
Marquee value. That's what the marketing folks are looking for. And they are willing to pay through the eyelets to get it. This strategy is also being adopted by other sneaker companies, both big and small. Forget doling out a firm's hardearned cash so some obscure NFL lineman can muddy up the corporate logo. Sneakers are too chic for those hogs in the trenches. Give us Paula Abdul, the pop star, who endorses Reebok's Double Time, the top-selling fashion athletic shoe. Gear.
How can a fledgling sneaker company break in against that kind of promotional clout? Roberto Muller, the president of Phoenix Integrated, a $15-million privately owned company that is seeking a niche at the less pricey end of the name-brand basketball-shoe market, asked himself that question and came up with a creative solution. He signed Patrick Ewing as the Phoenix spokesman by giving Ewing approximately 25% of the company's sports division. "Imagine if somebody had made that deal with Nike years ago," says David Falk of ProServ, which represents Ewing. "He'd be worth millions. And when shop isabel marant an athlete has equity, you can bet he'll do everything he can to see to it that his sneakers sell. The company ends up with a better spokesman."
No more embarrassing shenanigans, as when Los Angeles Rams running back Wendell Tyler wore one Adidas shoe and one Pony shoe during the 1980 Super Bowl. No more blatant infidelity, as when Philadelphia 76ers star Darryl Dawkins switched from Nike to Pro-Keds, back to Nike and then to Pony in a single spring, 1982. No more cutting the logo off one shoe and sewing it on a competitor's model, as distance runners have been known to do.
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