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The second-largest maker of sporting goods worldwide, adidas offers a broad range of products that are available in virtually every country. adidas is driven by a clear mission: “To be the leading sports brand in the world.”
the challenge
Every quarter, adidas introduces new products to their retail and channel partners via wholesale catalogs numbering thousands of pages.
Our challenge was to maximize the speed, cost efficiency, and selling effectiveness of these critical, and complex, go-to-market materials.
the solution
The solution for increasing the selling effectiveness of the marketing materials was the development of a system that allowed for customization of the materials for each of adidas' 30+ largest national accounts. No longer would adidas sales reps have to work with one-size-fits-all sales support.
At the same time, we wanted the system to cut printing costs — adidas' field sales wanted to deliver the marketing materials digitally rather than on the printed page.
To accomplish this, we created a production process that supported input from multiple product groups, and consolidated the product-selling information from creative assets down to the SKU-level. adidas' input into this all-important database is distributed across the globe.
An important part of this production machine was our proprietary technology solutions. We developed custom applications for our Digital Asset Management system, ImageDesk™ and our electronic proofing system, Boomerang™. Plus, we launched a new software system called Conduit™, which performs the database publishing functions using assets from ImageDesk and templates from Adobe InDesign.
the result
SolutionSet accomplished the goal of reduced cycle time and cost in the development of these sales materials while also moving away from costly paper and print. At the same time, we have introduced a process that allows for 100% customization by adidas sales reps for their largest national accounts.