Onitsuka Tiger strategy for Skillshare

“Digital Strategy on a Shoestring” final Project
Skillshare
Joan Collado (@joancollado)
Tutor: Amber Horsburgh
September 2013

ABOUTTHE BRAND
@joancolladDIGITAL STRATEGY ON A SHOESTRING
Founded by Kihachiro Onitsuka in 1949, Onitsuka Tiger designed originally running and basketball shoes in Japan.
His first major achievement is the creation of a revolutionary sticky sole for basketball shoes, which ended shoeing all college
teams balocesto of Kobe , his hometown .
Thanks to the Olympics (beginning with Melbourne ‘56) and its sponsorship with different athletes and Japan national team, the
brand achieved worldwide fame. Later, at the 80s, Onitsuka creates the Institute Of Sport Sciences, the most important research
sports center of the world. This is the period in which the sports brand Asics born, the result of the merger of Onitsuka Tiger with
two other companies willing to offer the best sports products.
Nowadays, if Onitsuka had become popular in pop culture and modern fashion thanks to movies like Kill Bill and Bruce Lee’s
“Game of Death”, Asics is an absolute reference for runners around the world.

ABOUTTHE WEBSITE
Source: Alexa
We’ll take Converse as a reference.

BUSINESS
OBJECTIVES
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
To increase awareness and sales of Onitsuka Tiger in USA among young people between 15 and 25 years.
COMMUNICATIONS PROCEDURE
We will realize a full digital research: category, competitors and customer, looking for the best way to communicate Onitsuka
Tiger’s unique values, related to its Japanese identity, quality and fashion.

1
category
research

GOOGLE TRENDS

INSIGHTS RECAP
Best searching moments of the year in
sneakers/sport shoes category, as well as in
different brands are December-January and
August. That’s a great opportunity for
planning effective campaigns in Google and
Social Media, and increase brand
awareness.
Sneakers category and Onitsuka Tiger are
especially relevant at New York and New
Jersey area. We can also mention California
and Washington as good places to work with
Onitsuka Tiger: There are people who
already knows the brand.

GOOGLETHINK
INSIGHTS

INSIGHTS RECAP
Our main target lives in the Internet, where they search through different retailers to find their favorite shoes.
Usually, the purchase process doesn’t come from the conscious need of the consumer, but for clicking on some search ad and
then finding interesting offers. Also, consumers doesn’t buy just after that, so it’s very important to plan some actions to increase
consideration.
Cross-shopping is crucial in shoes and sneakers category: People visit different competitors’ websites before making a
purchase. For that reason, brands have to establish good relationship with dealers like Zappos or Foot Locker. You never know
where will you sell your products.
At the same time, Onitsuka Tiger has to work constantsly on creating a good brand image. Taking in consideration that our main
target lives in the digital, it is a good idea to think about a video campaign like Adidas did few years algo.

PEW INTERNET
INSIGHTS RECAP
There’s an increasing trend of consumers using their
smartphones at store as information supplier. Brand
presence (and also well managed) at Internet is absolutely
necessary.
Two things consumers are interested at are pricing and
reviews. The kind of website that offers this information are
retailer sites like Zappos or Foot Locker (among others like
blogs, where word of mouth is the main ingredient), so it is
obvious that consumers enjoy general sites that allows them
to watch lots of brands and shoes in a little time.

INSIGHTS RECAP
Consumers love to share. It is remarkable that un 81% of
them doesn’t have any problem to tell the world what do they
like, and it includes fashion.

MIXRANK
INSIGHTS RECAP
Adidas is quite neutral in its search strategy, although there
are a couple of ads offering free shipping on $49 or more.
Free shipping is definitely a must when selling online.

INSIGHTS RECAP
New Balance uses free shipping resource (although from
$125 instead of $49, but what’s interesting is that it also talks
about properties like comfortability (“fits like a glove”), and
exclusiveness.

INSIGHTS RECAP
Asics, as an specialized brand in running, talks about quality
in manufacture for perfect fit and performance, with stability
and speed as results. Personalization is also there (“find your
perfect shoe”), understanding that not all shoes are made for
you.

INSIGHTS RECAP
Vans is an interesting brand in terms of promotion, because it
knows that its main target likes customization more than any
other people. Because of that, “colors” and “styles” are
repetitive keywords among the ads.
On the other hand, and following what we saw about cross-
channel, Vans offers a large (and wild!) selection of shoes.
The idea is to keep people on the site as long as possible.

INSIGHTS RECAP
Having seen Onitsuka’s competitors, we can say that customers are receptive to messages talking about their favorite, personal
and most comfortable shoe, customizable for them and with free shipping no matter the shoe’s price.
It is an important factor the size of the brand’s site in terms of how much shoes they can show. It’s extremely important to watch
the website’s quality and think of it as the first and main selling point.

2
competitive
research

COMPETE
INSIGHTS RECAP
Visits to Vans website follow the same trend as
seen before in Google Trends about the whole
category. There are two hot moments per year:
August and December.
In addition, it is curious that its first competitor is not
a brand itself (Converse, DC, Volcom), but Zumiez,
a shoe retailer which has a long variety of brands,
and even exclusive models.

OPEN SITEEXPLORER

INSIGHTS RECAP
Converse leads the category with 84 points and Onitsuka Tiger is the last one with 61. Just knowing that we can say that we
have a lot of work ahead.
Onitsuka has way less links than its competitors. Is absolutely necessary to work focused in increase awareness and popularity,
to generate word of mouth and to get the Internet linking our online shop and our website.

OPENFACEBOOK PAGE
ANALYTICS

INSIGHTS RECAP
Comparing this info with Google Trends we see that Onitsuka actually has a lot of fans around the globe. USA is one of the countries where the brand is less-known.
Most popular week for the four brands is between late November and beginning of February. Between July and August, Converse’s word of mouth and likes per week grew
up surprisingly, at the same time that the others went down.
Asics has a great community of people talking about the brand, although it has 36 million fans less than Converse. This is because Asics means running, and Barcelona is
one of the cities with more running culture of the world. On the other hand, Converse has millions of fans but doesn’t seem that there’s a good conversation in there.

SOCIALMENTION

INSIGHTS RECAP
New Balance has the shorter average per mention, which means a good activity on Social Media and frequent postings.
We continue to see that, although Converse has millions of fans, its popularity on Social Media could be better. 18 min.
average per mention and 13% strength doesn’t fit with all those fans on Facebook. We could say that lots of them are
passive fans.
On the other hand we have Onitsuka, leading the comparison with 28% strength, 33% passion, 46% reach, 207 unique
authors and 81:0 sentiment. It is fairly clear that this is our territory. We have a passionate community out there, and we
must count with them to attract new people. Our fans are ready to listen to us, to listen whatever we need to ask them. We
must make them participate in our growing plan. However, we need to work on our brand meanings.

3
consumer
research

TOPSY
After watching people’s opinions on Topsy, we can
make a short summary about brand positioning and
try to figure out what way we must take.

INSIGHTS RECAP
Asics shoes are perceived as light, running ones. That is its
function, but it’s possible to try and wear them as casual shoes.
Asics accomplish the promise very well, no one is deceived, as
Topsy shows.

INSIGHTS RECAP
Converse owns the market of casual shoes, but people are
aware that this brand is really mainstream. However, young
consumers have passion for wearing Converse shoes for its
classic but always trendy and customizable look.
(From Reddit)

INSIGHTS RECAP
New Balance aren’t the prettier shoes, that’s for sure, but it can
sell thanks to other features, like strength and durability.

INSIGHTS RECAP
Vans definitely represents social tribes (skaters, emos,
whatever). But it is curious that no one knows clearly which one.
Moreover, Vans is beginning to have the same problem as
converse: It is a brand perceived as mainstream.

INSIGHTS RECAP
Onitsuka Tiger’s campaign #MyTownMyTracks is an absolute
success. The brand gets closer to Japan’s meanings and
people likes it. Not much more brands can do this. This definitely
is a good start point when trying to be special and generate
awareness in USA.

FACEBOOK ADS

INSIGHTS RECAP
Our potential audience are 8 million people in the USA. As we thought previously, we could study more deeply New York and New Jersey
audience, so we could get more accurate data.
Variety of tastes: From stakeboard brands like Element to more elegant ones like Lacoste. It is people who are still searching for their identity.
Curiosity: Our audience also likes chips and candy, and Disney stuff. Were are aiming to an audience who has a child side. This could be
interesting when looking for our campaign’s tone and look.

REDDIT
At Reddit you can ask questions to other users about lots of
topics. Here’s a great community helping each other. Let’s take
a look into some interesting insights related to sneakers.

People are aware of the high price of their fauvorite sneakers
and they try to get cheaper ones. Here’s an example that
retailers like Zappos have a lot of power in this business.

Here’s a few social demands Onitsuka Tiger could take advantage of. Probably talking to
those girls who wear dresses and telling them it’s nothing wrong with wearing Tigers at the
same time could work. In addition, things like non-smell shoes or safety for your feet are
meanings Onitsuka could work.

That’s a huge one. This is a mix of what we’ve seen until now.

OUR PERSONA
Chloe has sixteen years and she is beginning to enjoy freedom.
Recently she moved to a new house in Brooklyn with her parents and
made some new friends from her new high school.
She is a fashionista, constantly looking for new trends. She wants to
break rules, try something new and unseen and be the trendy leader of
her gang. For her, mainstream means boredom.
She has the latest smartphone and her passion is to share whatever she
loves. One of her passions is to take photos of herself (for example, on
Instagram) wearing different outfits. She even has a fashion blog!
She is saving money for travelling to Europe. Paris and Milan are her
favorite cities. Maybe she’ll fall in love there!

CONCLUSION
To work with Onitsuka Tiger is a very beautiful challenge. Once you meet the brand you know there’s something huge there, with
a lot of potential. Onitsuka is a special case of a very traditional brand which can adapt itself perfectly to modern advertising.
We have seen that American market doesn’t know much of Onitsuka, so we have plenty of freedom to generate awareness to
our target (young people like Chloe) using digital tools like Google Search or Social Media, as those are the places where our
target lives. Fortunately we have a great position according to Social Mention data. Some ideas for our promotion are to use
Video Marketing (is a real opportunity) as well as to sponsor some events where our target is present, like music festivals. To
begin we could focus on New York and New Jersey area.
Moreover, we have to work hard on our message. It is correct to say that we are a Japanese fashion brand and that we sell
street shoes made for young and modern people. For that, our tone has to be close and friendly, not quite serious at all.
We can’t forget that our website needs to be improved, and we also have to work hard on staying very visible at retailer’s sites
like Zappos. Online cross-shopping is a huge trend in shoes category.

ありがとうございました!
(Thankyou!)

Onitsuka Tiger strategy for Skillshare

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