Athletic-Shoe Marketers Cater To Bloggers For Building Buzz
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Shoe Companies Turning To Blogs, Like
HypeBeast, To Help Market New Offerings |
Athletic-shoe marketers in recent years have been "going out of their way to seek out, cater to and stir up conversation among bloggers," who are known in the industry as "sneakerheads," according to Todd Wasserman of AD WEEK. While the bloggers represent a "tiny segment of the market, they are considered the primary vehicle for building buzz and hence get an inordinate amount of the sneaker companies' attention." The sneaker industry as recently as three years ago "spent a good deal of its money on print media, supporting various magazines that catered to a young, fashion-conscious crowd." But now if you "sell sneakers in the U.S., you have no choice but to form good relationships with a handful of bloggers who act as tastemakers for the category." adidas Sports Style Division U.S. Dir Simon Atkins said, "We have seen the sneaker culture increase over the past several years to the point where, today, bloggers are integral partners in helping spread the word about coming products. We're putting a lot of effort into this type of consumer, and we're spending a lot of time on them." Blogger Steve Levy claims that his HypeBeast blog "gets about 900,000 uniques a month, which is bigger than the readership of GQ." Levy said that he "works or has worked with all the big U.S. sneaker companies, providing a mix of PR and advertising sales." But Wasserman notes the "influence of bloggers on the sneaker segment appears to be ... on the wane." Reebok VP/Global Brand Marketing Rich Prenderville acknowledged the importance of sneakerheads, but said, "I don't think they influence the rest of the market as much as we thought a few years ago" (AD WEEK, 10/19 issue).
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