Abstract

Iconic American shoe brand, Sperry, wanted to reposition itself to target the ‘intrepid’ millennials. Sperry’s parent company, Wolverine Worldwide, in association with Minneapolis-based creative agency Mono embarked on the repositioning exercise of the brand to coincide with its 80th anniversary. A campaign called “Odysseys Await” was launched. It involved 80 millennials going on an adventure and documenting their experiences. These stories were to be placed in different social media channels as well as on the company’s website. The campaign was released through different social media channels inviting millennials to participate. Sperry’s makeover was targeted at millennials with an adventurous spirit and was aimed at involving them with the brand in such a way that they developed content for the promotion of the Sperry brand. The campaign evoked mixed reactions from analysts, with some of them wondering whether it would result in the target segment actually buying the Sperry boat shoe.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Understand the issues and challenges involved in segmenting, targeting, and positioning a product.
• Understand the issues and challenges involved in targeting millennials.
• Understand the issues and challenges in repositioning an iconic brand to target a new segment.
• Understand the issues and challenges in digital marketing and content marketing.
• Analyze Sperry’s “Odysseys Await” campaign.

Keywords

Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Social media marketing, Segmenting, Targeting, Positioning, Repositioning, Iconic Brand, Millennials, Characteristics of millennials, Customer trends, Content creation, Social media channels, Storytelling, Sperry