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Company: Puma SEEvent: Puma Event Retail for Puma Ocean Racingat the Volvo Ocean Race 2011 – 2012Objectives: Create interest in the Puma brandamong fashion-conscious consumers; drive retailsales of Puma shoes, clothes, and accessories; andincrease brand awareness worldwide.Strategy: Capitalize on Puma’s participation in theVolvo Ocean Race with a mobile pop-up eventspace and retail store constructed at each of therace’s 10 harbor visits.Tactics: Use four branded, 40-foot shippingcontainers to create a retail space and lounge withan urban, industrial feel intended to appeal toPuma’s trendy target market.Results: Surpassed retail-sales goals for the entireevent by 40 percent in the first three stops alone.Attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors.Creative Agency: Kubik BV, www.thinkubik.comProduction Agencies: Bitmove BV,www.bitmove.nl; Blowups Reklameobjecten BV,www.blowups.nl; Drei D Medien Service GmbH,www.dreid.com; Inflate Products Ltd.,www.inflate.co.uk; Sino Peak ConstructionMachinery Co. Ltd.,www.sino-peak.com.cnBudget: $930,000

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E V E N T A W A R D S

uma SE, a Germany-based manufacturer of athletic apparel and footwear, is not an unknownbrand. In fact, thanks in large part to Brazilian legend Pelé, the Puma brand is synonymous withsoccer the world over. Puma is to Pelé what Nike is to Michael Jordan. So why would the

company, which reported revenues of more than $3.5 billion in 2010 and counts charismatic UsainBolt (Olympic gold medalist, star of the Beijing summer games, and officially the fastest man aliveleading up to the London games) as one of its sponsored athletes, feel the need to launch a globalbrand-awareness campaign in 2011? Simply put, it wanted to change out of its short shorts andrunning shoes and slip into a pair of skintight “jeggings” and neon kicks. That’s right — it wanted tochase the fashionista crowd.

It’s not so unbelievable that an athletic company would want to see its sneakers firmly on the feet offashion-forward 20-somethings that dictate trends. In fact, Puma’s archrival, Adidas AG, made asimilar jump in the 1980s, courtesy of Run-D.M.C. The rap group brought their street style to thestage when they performed, and that style just happened to include the Adidas Superstar sneaker,which was originally designed as a basketball shoe. The group even wrote a song to express theiradmiration for their favorite kicks (in response to some haters in the rap world), and eventuallypenned an endorsement deal with the company.

Fast-forward 30 years, and the Adidas Superstar is still a go-to shoe among the fashion-conscious,hipster crowd, and has cemented itself as a fixture in pop-culture history. Understandably, Pumawanted a slice of that profitable pie. But it couldn’t jump ship and change course completely — afterall, it had legions of athletes loyal to Puma sports gear, and it didn’t want to risk alienating them.Fortunately, there was an event on the horizon at which both athletes and consumers wouldconvene in a perfect storm of marketing opportunities: The Volvo Ocean Race.

The biennial yacht race, which started in 1973 as the Whitbread Round the World Race until ABVolvo took over as the title sponsor in 2001, traverses the globe in less than a year. The 2011 –2012 race would take sailers to Alicante, Spain; Cape Town, South Africa; Abu Dhabi, United ArabEmirates; Sanya, China; Auckland, New Zealand; Itajaí, Brazil; Miami; Lisbon, Portugal; Lorient,France; and Galway, Ireland. Not only does Puma have a team that races aboard the company’s70-foot Mar Mostro (aka “sea monster”) vessel, that team came in second in the last Volvo Ocean Race, an accomplishment that cemented the importanceof the race in Puma’s overall marketing and brand-awareness efforts. “The Volvo Ocean Race is one of the world’s iconic sporting events, and it proved tobe an extremely successful marketing tool for us,” says Jochen Zeitz, Puma AG chairman and CEO.

In addition to racing in the competition, Puma is also a title sponsor and has real estate in theevent’s corresponding Race Village, a mini city filled with corporate pavilions, restaurants, andshops that pop up on shore as the racers dock in each port for a few weeks’ worth of concerts,performances, sailing clinics, and events. Thanks to the sheer popularity of the race, the success ofPuma’s sailing team, and the millions of people that visit the Race Village (it recorded a total of 4million visitors among all stops during the 2008 – 2009 race), the company knew it had access topieces that could bridge the gap between salted seafarers and casual consumers, and ultimatelyturn trendy youths into Puma enthusiasts. It just didn’t know how to do it. For that, it enlisted thehelp of Kubik BV, the Amsterdam office of exhibit- and event-marketing firm Kubik Inc.

“Puma wanted to leverage its participation in the race to drive sales of its sports clothing andheighten worldwide awareness of its lifestyle brand beyond the sailing crowd,” says Hajo Reinders,managing director of Kubik BV. “We focused our efforts on creating a Race Village pavilion thatwould not only lure visitors, but would also provide a sales opportunity.” And the key toaccomplishing that, Kubik surmised, could be found in two pastimes favored among the young andtrendy — shopping and chillaxing. Thus, the Puma pavilion would comprise a full-fledged retail storehawking the company’s branded gear, and a lounge area perfect for hanging out and soaking up allthings Puma.

Ship Shape

With the store and lounge idea percolating, Kubik sought design inspiration. The Puma pavilion — or

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Puma Quad, as it would be called — had to be eye catching, innovative, and bitching in order toattract the trendy youngsters the company was after. As luck would have it, Mar Mostro was all ofthose things. Conceived by London-based design firm GBH Design Ltd., the livery and graphics forthe yacht comprised striking red, squid-like tentacles that wrapped around the boat’s mostly blackhull and part of the sail. In a nod to the Puma brand, the tentacles on the hull formed thecompany’s signature swoosh found on all of its sneakers, and a graphic of a puma, dubbed the AquaCat, appeared to materialize from the sea and leap onto the bow. That same graphic was repeatedin a much larger scale on the sail. All Reinders and his team at Kubik had to do was translate theboat’s design into a retail space and lounge. Oh, and that retail space and lounge had to beportable, shippable, easy to install and dismantle, and durable enough to withstand nine months ofharbor hopping.

Because of the nature of the event — a race across the world’s oceans — commercial shippingcontainers, like the ones used to transport freight on trains and boats, seemed like a logical place tostart. “The shipping-container concept met all the requirements of the race,” Reinders says. “Byusing the shipping containers for the Puma Quad, we could create an easy-to-install, temporarysetting. Plus, it would look pretty cool, too.” What’s more, all the materials, store inventory,furniture, etc., that furnished the Puma Quad could simply be loaded up into the containers andshipped to the next port, a feature that impressed Corporate Event Awards judges, who called it“the epitome of efficiency.”

Thus, Kubik’s plans for the Puma Quad were simple enough, with the concept centered on four,40-foot steel shipping containers painted in Puma’s signature red color — the same red used for thetentacles painted on the Mar Mostro. And in fact, the tentacles would become a beacon atop thePuma Quad, as Kubik’s design included three 16-foot-long, hallow, hard-polyester tentaclesappearing to creep out of the shipping containers. A trio of the roughly 9.5-foot-tall containerswould be placed on the ground and serve as supports for the fourth container, cantilevered on toplike a wood block pulled halfway out of a Jenga tower. The four-container space would house thePuma retail store on the first floor, and a bar with a deck on the second floor.

To increase the effectiveness of the Puma Quad concept, Kubik made two of them, so they couldleap frog from port to port. “We knew the yachts would sail faster than our shipping vessels — it isa race, after all,” Reinders says. “And having a backup ensured that the Puma Quad would make itto every port, where it would be installed and ready to go well before the racers and visitorsarrived.” So while one Puma Quad was being unloadedand set up at the first Race Village in Alicante, Spain, for example, the second Puma Quad wouldalready be on its way to the next port.

In addition to the Puma Quad, event plans called for a separate, 40-by-40-foot structure to housethe Puma Social Club, an extension of another event-marketing concept launched in September2010 to kick off the company’s metamorphosis from athletic company to lifestyle brand. The mobileclub, which has its own microsite (www.puma.com/social), travels from city to city across the globe,setting up shop for a week at a time in brick-and-mortar venues located in or near hipster-ladenareas. While open, the Puma Social Club hosts concerts and performances from local musicians andartists, and features everything from dances to ping-pong tournaments — activities that appeal towhat the company refers to as “after-hours athletes.”

Those after-hours athletes just happen to be the same trendy consumers Puma sought to attractduring the Race Village, so the decision to pair the Puma Social Club with the Puma Quad was ano-brainer. To give the Puma Social Club a chic atmosphere that complemented the Puma Quad’sindustrial aesthetic, Puma turned to U.K.-based Inflate Products Ltd. “Puma wanted something bigthat could be packed down smaller than the shipping containers, and an inflatable structure metthat requirement,” says Inflate founder Nick Crosbie. But this wasn’t anything like your kid’s moonbounce.

Comprising a steel skeleton that served as a support system, the structure’s inflatable elementscame in the form of 8-foot-wide panels of black polyester PVC, chosen for its ability to deflect rainand dirt. The panels, which formed the sidewalls of the space, were covered in gray dots (the samedot texture that speckled the hull of the Mar Mostro) and inflated to create a bubble effect.

To juxtapose the soft, curvaceous sides, sleek, charcoal-gray glass comprised the front and rearfaçades, complete with double-wide glass doors to create a kind of semi-enclosed outdoor room.Adding to the outdoor enjoyment, an open-air deck, accessible by a staircase attached to the rearof the structure, covered the roof and featured a bar and seating areas. “We essentially designed areally cool place for people to hang out and chill,” Crosbie says. And that’s exactly what Pumawanted.

Calling All Landlubbers

With the design and construction underway for the Puma Quad and Puma Social Club, Puma turnedto the next step: marketing. Fortunately, since the Volvo Ocean Race is essentially the Super Bowlof sailing, little needed to be done by way of spreading the word about the event in general. What’smore, Puma was a title sponsor, and its participation in the race was well publicized via pressreleases, the race’s website www.VolvoOceanRace.com), and Puma’s own event-specific microsite(www.puma.com/sailing), which featured blog posts, photos, videos, and updates from the MarMostro crew, as well as a calendar of Race Village events.

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So in lieu of a big bucks, global, mass-media campaign promoting the Puma Quad in the weeksleading up to each port stop, Puma employed a combination of local billboards, print ads, andsignage at its retail stores in the race’s stopover cities. And to drive traffic to the microsite, Pumacreated a Mar Mostro-centered social-media presence via Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and YouTube,where the vessel’s charismatic and humorous crew members posted video diaries, photos, blogs,and daily updates during the race. In addition, the company invited fashion bloggers in each port tovisit the Puma Quad, hoping a glowing review would create some buzz and entice more trendy,young people to visit in subsequent cities as the store-slash-lounge made its way from port to port.So with the marketing machine plugging away and the Puma Quad and Puma Social Club ready togo, Puma was confident it would attract the fashion-forward consumers it eagerly sought. And withthat, it packed up and set sail for the first Race Village stop.

When the Puma Quad and Puma Social Club landed in Alicante, the installation crew spent just fivedays setting it up before the Race Village festivities began on Oct. 14. As soon as the village openedits doors, visitors flooded the gates, eager to explore the shops, restaurants, pavilions, andactivities inside. Much to Puma’s delight, droves of landlubbers made a beeline for the hard-to-miss,19-foot-tall Puma Quad, whose tentacles stretched upward, seemingly reaching out to grab curiouspassersby and pull them in. Once attendees succumbed to the lure of the strange structure (whichresembled an “L” laying on its back when viewed from the side), they could enter through glassdoors on either end of the bottom containers and shop in the roughly 13,000-square-foot retailspace, filled with everything Puma from athletic apparel and shoes to fashion accessories andhandbags.

After attendees perused the store’s offerings, staffers invited them to participate in a sailing-inspired photo opportunity. Donning a crimson-red, Puma-branded sailing jacket, aspiring sailorstook turns stepping in front of a backdrop that featured a graphic of red tentacles rising from theocean. One by one, people took the “helm” of the Mar Mostro (a steering wheel mounted to thefloor in front of the backdrop), and had their picture taken. The photos were then immediatelyuploaded to Puma’s Facebook page and sailing microsite, and participants were encouraged to sharethe photos with friends and family.

As soon as the impromptu photo op was over, visitors headed back outside and trekked up a set ofstairs leading to the Bar Mostro, housed in the fourth container. While upstairs, attendees perchedon the roughly 750-square-foot wooden deck, enjoyed refreshing beverages and snacks, and tookin the harbor sites and race activities happening nearby. And when they had their fill of sun, booze,and food, they made their way back down the stairs and headed across the courtyard to the PumaSocial Club.

Here, Puma hosted a plethora of live events, ranging from educational classes for kids (part of thecompany’s ongoing dedication to promote ocean preservation) and knot-tying lessons taught by MarMostro crew members to performances by local artists. Throughout the three-week run in Alicante,for example, the Puma Social Club played host to Spanish DJ Liz Mugler, Ibiza musician SergioGallegos, and the band Mision Amarte, among others.

In addition to concerts, the space hosted several Tapas Nights where attendees sampled variouslocal culinary treats, and an opportunity to go on a run with Wilson Kipketer, a Puma-sponsoredathlete and holder of nine world running titles. In between parties, concerts, and long-distanceruns, attendees were encouraged to simply sit back and soak up the Puma brand.

Wind in the Sails

The fact that attendees enjoyed hanging out in the Puma Quad and Puma Social Club is all well andgood, but it also needed to lead to some cold, hard results in order to be considered a success byPuma. And it did. Exit polls for the Alicante Race Village showed that more than 70 percent of theestimated 940,000 visitors stopped by the Puma Quad and Puma Social Club — 40 percent abovegoal. In addition to surpassing its attendance objectives, Puma also exceeded its retail-sales goal by20 percent. The positive results from Alicante proved that Puma had set a clear course for success.

By the time the Puma Quad and Puma Social Club landed in Abu Dhabi, the third stopover city,Puma’s retail sales were already 40 percent above its target for the entire race. And when it hit theeighth stop, the store had recorded 17,000 transactions and sold 37,000 items, putting Puma wellahead of its sales goals. Needless to say, Puma was impressed by its performance. And so werejudges, one of whom said, “The success of this event — which is entirely on brand, completelyconsistent, and really well executed — confirms that Puma has cachet beyond the sporting world.”

By catering to the loyal fans of its sportswear and athletic shoes with the Puma Quad while introducing itself as a lifestyle brand to a whole new crop ofconsumers in the Puma Social Club, Puma successfully navigated the rebranding waters without losing speed. Now that’s how you win a race. E

Lena Valenty, managing editor; lvalenty@exhibitormagazine.com

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