Conceding that his company has not taken the right tact in America up to now, adidas North America President Mark King on Thursday at the IMG World Congress of Sports affirmed that he and fellow execs are ready to get away from the soccer-centric marketing in the U.S. in order to gain marketshare in football, baseball and basketball. King, who during a one-on-one interview said the brand does “fantastic everywhere but the U.S.,” added, “For the past eight or nine months, we’ve been kind of looking ourselves in the mirror. ... adidas for many, many years was the dominant brand in soccer -- or football as they like to say -- and it tried to use that halo effect from soccer in the U.S. to be able to drive connectivity with consumers, and I just don’t think it worked very well. So we have a few fundamental things that we have to change how we operate. The first is we have to respect the U.S. as this big powerful marketplace and have be able to nuance whatever we do to be relevant really for the consumer and for people who want to have sportswear for lifestyle. So we’re moving a lot of resources from Germany to Portland and really creating products now for the first time specifically for our marketplace. We really need to say who we are here in America and be about American sport: Football, baseball, basketball -- not excluding soccer -- but then volleyball and softball and lacrosse and field hockey -- those sports that most countries don’t have. So those are nuances that I don’t think the adidas group has really appreciated -- that to really win here, we’re going to have to do things much differently than we’ve been doing.”
GREAT BRAND, BUT MORE FOCUS NEEDED: King, who jokingly said while adidas’ top execs in Germany have not granted him autonomy, he is “just taking it,” added on the topic, “It’s a very centralized model and it works everywhere in the world for them. But I think with me coming in, one of the things we talked about a lot early on was through building credibility, we could have more autonomy and the ability to do things for American athletes.” King added, “The reality is this: adidas is a fantastic brand with tremendous heritage and does really well outside of the U.S. But the lack of focus on the U.S. over the last 10 or 15 years has really left us with retailers wanting us to succeed but wanting better product, better messages and better execution. And the consumer at the end of the day has so many options here from so many different competitors and now you have emerging brands like Lululemon for women. So it’s hyper competitive and competitive almost by segment -- by running; by women; by kids -- so we’ve just been very, very confusing. But I do think it's a big opportunity is because the American consumer is thirsting for something that’s new and exciting, I think the brand loyalty here -- with a few category exceptions -- I think it’s really easy to break brand loyalty with the American consumer because they’re looking for something fresh. So whoever is going to win long term is not who is the best today but who is the most disruptive in their category going forward."
