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People and Pop Culture

Hangin' With ... Adidas Originals Senior Director Pascha Naderi-Nejad

PASCHA NADERI-NEJAD’s experience in the sportswear industry has taken her to Europe and back. Prior to joining adidas Originals as its senior director, Naderi-Nejad started her career with the brand as a category manager for kids merchandising. After her first stint at adidas, she held roles at Nike and Asics before rejoining adidas to head the Originals brand in Portland, Ore. Naderi-Nejad has lived in Germany and the Netherlands over the course of her 18-year career in the shoe and sportswear industry. She spoke with SBD Global about her vision for the brand, reaching the youth market and the Superstar shoe campaign.

On adidas’s vision ...
Pascha Naderi-Nejad: We have new leadership, spearheaded by [adidas Global Head of Brands] ERIC LEIDTKE’s vision to have more category-centric organization that we call brand leadership. This is a really exciting opportunity because it gives the business unit full decision-making for your business for the consumer. Before, we were too matrix-led with too many decision-makers. This empowers the business unit to own that. We implemented brand leadership here a couple months ago. I’m now fully in charge of the U.S. business unit for Originals. I have a go-to-market team, a brand marketing team and I work very closely with a creation team here. Our main focus is winning the consumer. How do we assess the consumer behavior, the insight and translate that into meaningful strategies? That’s really what the idea is for the business unit. Having oversight of both go to market and brand really allows us to develop holistic strategies. … We’re really leading the vision in North America for Originals, so we look to global in terms of the overall global vision and we tailor that to make sure that its specifically relevant for the U.S. Lastly, our remit is making sure that we offer very compelling marketing and product stories to the consumer so that we culturally connect with them and engage with them in a meaningful way.

On the challenges of her role ...
Naderi-Nejad: I see [challenges] as opportunities, because the more I think we get to immerse ourselves in consumer understanding, the more we’re strategic on connecting with them. So that’s actually the really exciting part of our job. How do we look at all those ripe cultural moments, all of those insights that are part of the kids’ lives? For us, it’s being on pulse with desktop research, being in the market, connecting and talking to kids, reading big reports. There are so many varieties and ways we can get those insights, but I would say that’s really the opportunity, the more we learn about the consumer, the more effective we are.

On reaching the consumer ...
Naderi-Nejad: I think the sports industry is changing dramatically. And that’s because the consumer is changing. The whole notion of brick and mortar has really changed over the last few years. Kids are on their mobiles. How are big brands adapting to this new insight? I say kids because they are actually our focus consumer -- the high school athlete. These consumers are extremely savvy in terms of knowing how brands are marketed to them, where they can get exclusive releases and where they can get the best prices. So how we adapt to the consumer behavior is one of the things we have to stay ahead of. It’s also a great challenge for our go-to-market team. They are always looking at ways to roll out product and engage with the consumer, just like our marketing team.

On European and U.S. trends ...
Naderi-Nejad: Right now, kids are so savvy and understand what’s happening around the globe. Things used to be pretty isolated and just would happen in the U.S. and just in Europe. I think kids know what’s happening across the pond. We see that transfer of information actually happen a lot. When things might be on trend in Europe, we see it coming to the U.S. much quicker than in the past and vice versa. Knowledge is definitely shared across the globe. Distribution is probably the biggest difference. I think we have more of a sneaker culture here, not to say that they don’t in Europe, I think they definitely have their aficionados, but sports culture is so intrinsic in today’s [U.S.] kid.

On her goals for adidas Originals ...
Naderi-Nejad: We have three things -- we want to keep winning the hearts of our consumers. The strongest validation is when I go into a focus group and I know that adidas kids are bleeding the three stripes and they’re proud to wear the brand. Having that kid athlete passionate about the brand is the first validation. The second validation for me is that we are an innovative culture. We want to create and inspire internally people to have creative ideas. I’m a firm believer that great ideas can come from anybody. You don’t have to be just focused on your role. I want to create an innovative culture. That’s actually the vision of [adidas Group North America President] MARK KING as well. Our team is inspired to ideate at any level. The third vision is that we double our market share. We’re a very compelling brand. We’re a big brand. And globally we have great brand strength. I want to be able to double our market share in this market because we are an awesome brand.

On the Superstar shoe campaign ...
Naderi-Nejad: It really started with making the Superstar hot. For us, it was really cleaning up the market and introducing a new Superstar for the year 2015 that was based on comfort, a more premium fit and a more modern look. So, we cleaned up the market, took out the old Superstar and cleaned up our distribution. We were really descriptive about our distribution and re-launched it in a meaningful way, meaning we did a very aggressive feeding program. We brought in hype, which is limited execution of the Superstar and then rolled out a big campaign around All-Star week in a very culturally relevant moment for the consumer. ... We’ve seen massive endorsements, especially around our female consumers. ... It’s having a great halo effect around our whole business.

Hangin' With runs each Friday in SBD Global.

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