IN TRODUCTION:

Adidas, a well-known German brand company which

manufactures a wide range of products including sports
footwear,bags,shirts,watches and other sports related
goods, for the branding and promotion of sales they had
collaboration with a designer,who had designed mickey
mouse and panda heads themes by Jeremy Scott,which
inspired our childhood. He designed a pair of orange and
purple adidas sneakers which was inspired by a toy
monster from the 1980’s.

On 14,June 2012 adidas posted on facebook page

sneakers named JS ROUNDHOUSE MIDS for $350 with
a caption “GOT SNEAKER GAME SO HOT YOU
LOCK YOUR KICKS TO YOUR ANKLES”, which was
misinterpreted by the people as sneakers looked like
“SHACKLE SHOES”.
On the sameday, it received more than 34,000 negative
critics including some famous people Mr. REVEREND
Jessie Jackson made a critic saying “ The attempt to
commercialise and make popular more than 200 years of
human degradation where blacks were considered three-
fifths human by our constitution is offensive ,appalling
and insensitive.”

Due to many negative critics Adidas thought that it

can’t make profit on commercialised human degration
grounds. So it finalized to withdraw the JS
ROUNDHOUSE MID designed shackled shoes from the
market and finally responded to the criticism on 18 June
with the statement “ The design of JS ROUNDHOUSE
MID is nothing more than the designer JEREMY
SCOTT’s outrageous and unique take on fashon and has
nothing to do with slavery.We apologise if people are
offended by the design and we are withdrawing our plans
to make available in the marketplace”
 Steps in solving the case:

1. View of adidas ad on shackled shoes

2. reasons for misunderstanding of adidas ad in both

verbal and non verbal communication

3. What can be the better response to controversy

4. What will be the companies marketing strategy

CASE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1.In order to promote the sales, Adidas came up with the

new fashion shoes JS ROUNDHOUSE MID whose main
idea is to give more grip to ankles which misled to a
theme which reflected as African –American times
slavery shoes.

In terms of verbal communication the reason for mis

interpretation was the tagline “GOT A SNEAKER
GAME SO HOT YOU LOCK YOUR KICKS TO YOUR
ANKLES?” which was reflecting the human degradation
confronting slavery .Without proper market research and
getting feedback from people they launched product
shackled shoes , during launching a new product in
market majorly three things should be considered like
Targeted customer, Channel , Product Specification but in
case of adidas written product specification was not
effective.

In terms of non verbal communication the bright

colour of shackles aroused African American people’s
emotions which made them to feel as slaves.

2. We feel that Adidas was trying to launch a new

fashion shoes but the people’s focus was more on the
orange shackle which was misinterpreted leading to
racisim against African-American but their intention was
to create a new fashion for youth and also to provide grip
for ankles.
 3. Adidas after receiving criticism from people it
made a statement stating that it has apologized to the
people , received feedback from people and prevents
future action to launch the product .It could be better if
they had first apologized and then had given justification
for the caption “Got a sneaker game so hot you lock your
kicks to your ankles” and they could have stood strong in
the designs made by Jeremy Scott. The apology could
have been better with this statement:

“We thought to create a new fashion in sports wear world,

we are grateful for the people who admired our service
and for perturbed people.We deeply extend our repentant
and we take this as your valuable feedback.”

4.