That New Shoe Smell and Feel...Can B2B Marketing Tap Into This Magic?

And there it is. That new shoe smell. And that new shoe look. Its a glorious thing. If you like your gear, gadgets and sports, you are probably like me, and you love your new kicks.

Sneakers in particular, are typically the most innovative category of footwear, or at least in my opinion, they are. And more specifically basketball sneakers. Simply getting a new pair of basketball sneakers makes me giddy.

I visualize my pick-up hoops moves, who I can beat off the dribble or shoot over. I think about hitting the ball traveling laterally line to line for well-struck 'gets' in my tennis league. And I think about a look-good, feel-good scenario where at 45 I can still play and get a competitive charge when I play well in sports I'm active in. (until I need ice, Advil and Biofreeze after playing...and, while I am currently nursing a torn and subsequently repaired ACL as the NBA is in full swing...)

How did it all start?

How have brands created this aura or this experience for us? Why does getting a new pair of basketball kicks feel and smell so good?

It started with Nike's promotion of the Air Jordan, part of Nike's Jordan brand. MJ revolutionized basketball, and paved the way for Kobe, Vince Carter, Shaquille O'Neal, LeBron James, Sue Bird, and the list goes on. Having a star baller endorse and wear variations of his or her own model of shoe is tantalizing. But why? What's the sauce that works here?

Coolness. Style. Performance. Knowing the good shoes, and knowing what not to wear. You wanted to be like Mike as a child athlete, and now that you can actually afford whatever pair of kicks you want, you want to at least capture 25% of that performance as an adult when you're playing whatever sport is your sport.

I'll go back further pre-Jordans: Converse' Choose Your Weapon campaign for The Weapon sneaker, highlighted by former Boston Celtics' player Larry Bird and Magic Johnson (and others) was also a trailblazing campaign featuring the top players in the league endorsing their color variation of The Weapon.

The Boston-L.A. rivalry was fierce in the 1980's. Both teams were just about always in the NBA Finals, they are the two most celebrated franchises in the pro game, and these games were physical and high-scoring.

Bird vs Magic was amazing - two smart and competitive players who came into the league at the same time and wanted to desperately beat each other every time they stepped onto the hardwood. It was rare to see two players this competitive with each other. The shoes were ahead of their time, but again, it was the player endorsement of these sneakers paired with a unique design that sold these shoes. And this was before the React Juice!!

What's my point? Why is it that new kicks are so damn satisfying? I've been in B2B Marketing for cybersecurity for maybe 15 years, and I'd like to draw some parallels.

Coolness.

Unlike hockey skates or wrestling shoes or most cleats that I have seen - basketball kicks are just cool. Colors, mid-high, full-high, low cut, different sole options and support features, and don't forget the custom sites and shops where you can design your own kicks.

Just taking a new job at a really cool new cybersecurity company, Cyware, I am looking at all kinds of different techniques from all flavors of Marketing and Advertising, from anywhere I can find that coolness factor of the sneaker business, to enhance my approach in how I help scale this awesome start-up...and go mainstream with the brand. I've realized there's an opportunity to learn from other familiar brands and their campaigns, even if its not obvious on the surface. Go cool.

Do it Better. (Performance)

We all want to do things better. We all want to improve. Performance is everything. And we all want to figure out ways to do things more efficiently and perform better. Like, in everything. Sports. Relationships. Work. Parenting. Communicating. Work.

If you are an athlete, and you are still involved in athletics at any type of competitive level, and if you are in your mid-40's like me, the goal sometimes is just to retain your skill and ability as you fight through nagging injuries and sometimes more severe injuries.

But then its that one game when you are hitting every shot, making crisp passes, running the floor well, making defensive stops and dictating the action - ' in the zone' - yeah when that happens its awesome. You think you can get better every time you step onto the hardwood. I actually have been marketed to well-enough over the years that I do think about my shoes when playing sports, and how they are impacting how I perform.

Even the Be Like Mike campaign from Gatorade will go down in history for making you want to drink Gatorade for performance enhancement, so you could, eh, be like Mike. That is some secret sauce right there.

Ultimately, you aspire to play better. You aspire to continually hone your game, whatever game it is you play. Kicks in many forms, in a strange way mentally, actually do make you play better. I have no scientific evidence other than the billions of dollars made globally in this market that marketers tapped into in the early 80's and have evolved it, and guess what - it still works today. Its real. Remember The Reebok Pump? Of course you do. Who didn't want to dunk like Dee Brown when he won the NBA's Dunk contest in 1991? The gimmick of 'pumping up' prior to liftoff helped cement Reebok as a player in the athletic footwear market, hitting $500M in Pump line sales 18 months after it debuted.

Style

Style is synonymous with sports. Athletes and rock stars used set the style agenda. Tik Tok stars have replaced rock stars, but athletes persist being stylistic trend setters. With the thousands of styles across dozens of sneaker brands, style is what sets apart a good product from one that sells millions within a $4B industry.

Think about Jordan again - he hasn't played in an NBA game in 17 seasons, and he made $130M last year through Jordan brand sneaker sales - the definition of being truly the best in your class, league, in your industry. In fact, I think back to my college project on the 'Reignman' sneaker endorsed by Shawn Kemp, a dynamic power forward for the team formerly known as the Seattle SuperSonics.

I put a Marketing plan together for this sneaker product that focused on a buyer persona of college rec players, and it was cool tapping into that 'it' factor for an existing product. Because he was a popular player at the time, among ballers it probably would have resonated well. Pretty sure I scored an A, but I don't recall classmates being overly impressed because I'm not sure there were any hoopsters in the class. Fundamentally the campaign was built around style and performance - bright green and white, with some black accents, and just different from other shoes on the market that would help you jump through the roof.

Applicability to Your Industry

What is the connection here? And how does fit into real-world applicability? After all, there aren't a lot of jobs in the sneaker marketing business. How can a marketer apply this concept of bringing the feel of excellence, coolness, style and performance enhancement that influences a buyers early adoption of a cybersecurity software product, and ultimately critical mass adoption?

If you unpack how the B2B Marketing operation is planned, managed and executed, its an entirely different ballgame than B2C Marketing. For example in B2B cybersecurity, which is the industry I've been in for over 15 years, the majority of the 3000+ cybersecurity organizations focus on selling to the Chief Information Security Officer, otherwise known as the CISO. This is top operational position in this industry for financial services, pharma, healthcare, manufacturing and government.

CISOs face a number of substantial challenges. Most notably, the biggest challenge presents itself in the form of an incredibly dangerous threat landscape - meaning the CISO and cybersecurity team are continuously defending the business' infrastructure and operations from attackers. With so many flavors of attack techniques like ransomware and spear-phishing attackers apply to their campaigns to steal data, they are trying to exploit any possible gap in cyber software, process and people at any given company at any given point in time. Essentially cybersecurity teams find themselves in a consistent state of defense. In other words, I want them to love their technology acquisition and want to endorse Cyware!

Second, they're typically under board and regulatory pressure to consistently innovate in improving cyber operations. Third, they have to place bets with vendors and personnel to help improve defenses and automate processes to get quicker, better and more efficient about how they defend. What's the best approach for vendors to position strategically into the hearts and minds of the CISO and his or her team?

How does elite athlete-endorsed product marketing translate into the B2B realm of marketing? Is it about making the software product or service so appealing to the CISO with a stylish or coolness factor with a promise of the usual ROI of better-fast-smarter? Or, is it about helping the CISO meet their performance objectives? Perhaps its a subtle cross between selling the 'Be Like Mike' vision, with a clearly defined path to success that makes new cyber solutions easier to use and more intelligent for a better way to defend against the threats faced today, and for threats not yet seen.

I'm dedicated to experimentation in 2021 with new techniques, positioning and new tactics to dazzle and support prospects and customers so they can appreciate threat intelligence correlation as much they can appreciate the coolness of the redesigned Air Zoom soles of the new KD13's. I'm going to attempt to recreate a feeling of 'airiness' for Cyware's soon-to-be-customers in 2021, to provide the tools and resources for them that will give them that new shoe smell feeling with their new software.

One way I am doing this, is I'm building a new video chat and podcast series where I'll invite some cyber ballers to chat with me on trends driving the cyber market, and the innovation they need as the threat landscape evolves. (I'll post those here when we roll out the series next month!)

A second method I've stumbled upon to get prospects to Be Like Mike is cool initiative we have going on where our goal is to create a threat sharing center similar to an ISAC. (Information Sharing and Analysis Center) These are usually created by industry, ie., financial services, healthcare, critical infrastructure, etc. However, our C3 initiative seeks to offer one of our solutions as part of a movement to share threat intelligence across industries - something every cybersecurity practitioner should want to be a member of. So maybe that fits the mold of getting these folks to feel like they just bought a new pair of kicks, that helped them hit a game-winning trey!!

Recommendation

My book recommendation for this post will not be a book, but rather a training recommendation. I stumbled stumbled across a collossal collection of trainings from Entrepreneur Magazine. I opted for the Digital Marketing Manager Bundle to refresh some skills with self-paced learning across social media, marketing strategy and new digital techniques to apply to the Marketing repertoire. Check it out!