manufactures a wide range of products including sports footwear,bags,shirts,watches and other sports related goods, for the branding and promotion of sales they had collaboration with a designer,who had designed mickey mouse and panda heads themes by Jeremy Scott,which inspired our childhood. He designed a pair of orange and purple adidas sneakers which was inspired by a toy monster from the 1980’s.
On 14,June 2012 adidas posted on facebook page
sneakers named JS ROUNDHOUSE MIDS for $350 with a caption “GOT SNEAKER GAME SO HOT YOU LOCK YOUR KICKS TO YOUR ANKLES”, which was misinterpreted by the people as sneakers looked like “SHACKLE SHOES”. On the sameday, it received more than 34,000 negative critics including some famous people Mr. REVEREND Jessie Jackson made a critic saying “ The attempt to commercialise and make popular more than 200 years of human degradation where blacks were considered three- fifths human by our constitution is offensive ,appalling and insensitive.”
Due to many negative critics Adidas thought that it
can’t make profit on commercialised human degration grounds. So it finalized to withdraw the JS ROUNDHOUSE MID designed shackled shoes from the market and finally responded to the criticism on 18 June with the statement “ The design of JS ROUNDHOUSE MID is nothing more than the designer JEREMY SCOTT’s outrageous and unique take on fashon and has nothing to do with slavery.We apologise if people are offended by the design and we are withdrawing our plans to make available in the marketplace” Steps in solving the case:
1. View of adidas ad on shackled shoes
2. reasons for misunderstanding of adidas ad in both
verbal and non verbal communication
3. What can be the better response to controversy
4. What will be the companies marketing strategy
CASE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1.In order to promote the sales, Adidas came up with the
new fashion shoes JS ROUNDHOUSE MID whose main idea is to give more grip to ankles which misled to a theme which reflected as African –American times slavery shoes.
In terms of verbal communication the reason for mis
interpretation was the tagline “GOT A SNEAKER GAME SO HOT YOU LOCK YOUR KICKS TO YOUR ANKLES?” which was reflecting the human degradation confronting slavery .Without proper market research and getting feedback from people they launched product shackled shoes , during launching a new product in market majorly three things should be considered like Targeted customer, Channel , Product Specification but in case of adidas written product specification was not effective.
In terms of non verbal communication the bright
colour of shackles aroused African American people’s emotions which made them to feel as slaves.
2. We feel that Adidas was trying to launch a new
fashion shoes but the people’s focus was more on the orange shackle which was misinterpreted leading to racisim against African-American but their intention was to create a new fashion for youth and also to provide grip for ankles. 3. Adidas after receiving criticism from people it made a statement stating that it has apologized to the people , received feedback from people and prevents future action to launch the product .It could be better if they had first apologized and then had given justification for the caption “Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your kicks to your ankles” and they could have stood strong in the designs made by Jeremy Scott. The apology could have been better with this statement:
“We thought to create a new fashion in sports wear world,
we are grateful for the people who admired our service and for perturbed people.We deeply extend our repentant and we take this as your valuable feedback.”