On Fitness, brand re-positioning and more: Reebok India's Basu

Reebok, a name synonymous to sports, fitness and now lifestyle has recently launched a new brand campaign, “Live with Fire” for Reebok India. The brand campaign officially unveiled the new brand mark – Reebok Delta and also featured an exciting commercial that was shot in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The campaign was aired on television on in the last of April 2014. This is the first time that the brand featured three fitness enthusiasts and Reebok brand ambassadors M.S.Dhoni, John Abraham and Nargis Fakhri, who showcased in a never seen before ‘avatar’.

Reebok as a brand is dedicated to fitness and aims to provide consumers with the right experiences, products and the inspiration to be ‘Fit for Life’. Through this unique campaign, the brand aims to highlight three core fitness categories; Running, Training and Studio. 

Adgully caught up with Somdeb Basu, Brand Director, Reebok India, to share the TVC video grabs and to give an overview on the unusual campaign, which he says is a part of the brands overall vision and philosophy for 2014.

Speaking about the campaign, Basu said, “The unique campaign reinforces Reebok’s commitment to fitness through a compelling story telling-format. The campaign focuses on the igniting passion of an individual for fitness with #WhatsYourFire messaging and builds an emotional connect with the overall ‘Live with Fire’ theme. Earlier, the brand adopted a three-pronged strategy to grow in India with continuous innovation in products of the Running, Training and Studio category which has been wedded with 'Live with Fire' marketing campaign.”

Reebok launched its new brand mark through this campaign. Elaborating on the same, he said, “The new Reebok Delta symbol represents the positive and transformative change that fitness can have on a person’s life and symbolizes a better life through fitness; physically, mentally and socially. The brand mark is our symbol of change - an invitation to take part and unlock your true potential.”

This campaign saw three popular fitness icons – John Abraham, Nargis Fakhri and M.S. Dhoni come together for the first time. Explaining on the reason behind choosing them as the face of this campaign, Basu told us that John, Nargis and Dhoni share a common bond in terms of their strong passion for fitness which resonates with the brand ideology perfectly. They are popular in their respective fields and push themselves beyond limits to bring out the best in themselves! Consumers relate to these personalities and this has been proved through some of our successful campaigns in the recent past. “We are overwhelmed to have brought together these three iconic personalities on board for Reebok’s ‘Live with Fire’ campaign,” he added.

Well, recently the brand re-positioned itself as a multi-fitness brand. Highlighting the reason behind the same, Basu stated, “As first movers in the Fitness category, the onus is now on us to grow the ‘fitness segment’ in India and we already have a sound product, marketing, retail excellence program in place for the same. Fitness is growing exponentially in India and as a market is estimated to be over 500 Million USD. I have no doubts about the potential and we will continue to invest in great product and marketing to ensure we raise the awareness levels and get more and more people to embrace fitness.”

Also a part from re-positioning the brand’s identity Reebok also shifted its focus towards promoting women’s fitness in the county. According to Basu, with the growing women’s fitness market in the country, their aim is to inspire more and more women to adopt fitness as an integral part of their lifestyle. “In this endeavor we have appointed Nargis Fakhri as our women’s fitness ambassador for our studio range, a unique and innovative line of products focused on dance, aerobics and yoga designed especially for the women consumers. We also launched our first all women staffed Reebok Fit Hub concept store in Select City Walk Mall, New Delhi, and provided all women training sessions as a part of the Reebok Running Squad, a special training program for people running the Airtel Delhi,” he added.