Reebok Losing Ground?

There is an article in today's Boston Herald titled, "Adidas: Reebok no shoe-in—dramatic losses in co.’s share of market," that noted, "Reebok's German parent company will spend $64 million more than planned next year on marketing and other efforts aimed at revitalizing Reebok, which it purchased for $3.8 billion in January. Adidas, which originally had expected to see improvement from the Canton company in the current quarter, now doesn't foresee growth in Reebok orders until the second half of next year."

I have to ask – who is running Reebok's marketing department at the moment? Look at the deals Reebok has signed over the last few years:

· NFL's apparel license
· Shoe contract with MLB
· The NBA announced that Reebok had signed a 10-year deal to be the official apparel maker of the NBA, WNBA and NBDL in 2001

Um…do you think it might be a good idea to work with the leagues to create cross-promotion marketing plans? Why hasn’t the company developed some snazzy commercial that everyone starts talking about? Is the company posting all of their commercials on YouTube? Please tell me they have a MySpace page.

I understand the company needed to stay quiet as it integrated with adidas, but the marketing department should have spent the time creating ideas so they could have hit the ground running in October – when MLB was finishing and the NFL and NBA were starting up. It seems to me that would have been the perfect time to start the new and improve rolling thunder buzz campaign.

From the outside, it looks like Reebok has tons of firepower and tons of resources to gain more marketshare. While we don’t know what is going on internally, I hope they straighten things out soon.