The German sportswear brand PUMA aimed to reinvent its classic sportswear range for the Chinese market with a branded content campaign for its classic wear range spearheaded by a cinematic new commercial fronted by Chinese dancer-turned-actor-singer and all round sex symbol Yang Yang.
The campaign, created in harness with VMLY&R Shanghai and which initially debuted in January, aims to champion and highlight the brand’s iconic street-style.
The creative is loosely an homage to the classic movie The Warriors and positions 27-year-old youth idol Yang Yang as the charismatic leader of a youth movement dressed in their own take on iconic Puma gear.
The cinematic ad approach is that this sense of style is embodied by Yang Yang who is positioned in the promotion as the leader of a growing movement of empowered individuals who each with their own unique urban-style.
“Puma is a prestigious global brand doing great things in China,” explained VMLY&R Managing Director (Shanghai) Annie Boo
“The new campaign has been designed to communicate this through impactful images that capture the distinctive nature of their newest collection and position them as the leaders they are.”
Comment:
This new 2019 work follows in the style and footsteps of Yang Yang’s 2018 Puma creative.
Western world sportswear giants are quickly maturing their positioning and approach in Asia and while some prefer strategies that export their home market positioning (see Van’s ‘Comfy Cushy: High School’ case study), others like Puma re-orientate the brand from a Chinese perspective and creative filter.
According to Asian Sponsorship News data, Puma ranks fifth in the Asian region’s apparel category: spending US$49m (a 3.4% category share), but the investment is down around 30% in 2018 from the previous year.
Nevetherless, the brand’s celebrity (non-sport) endorsement investment has grown since the third quarter of 2017 – rising by 22% from US$506,000 to US$606,000 in the first quarter of 2019 – with work fronted by stars such as supermodel Liu Wen, actress Kitty Zhang Yu Qi, actors Li Xian and Liu Haoran Turbo and Yang Yang.
Links:
Puma
https://www.vmlyr.com/locations/shanghai
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