On the campaign trail. Puma’s untamed creativity

The New Year seems to have put new energy into the ad world, which has given us lots of lovely work this past fortnight — from Absolut’s unlabel campaign, which encourages people to look beyond labels and stereotypes, to Naukri’s tongue-in-cheek billboard campaign during the Coldplay concert in Mumbai, addressing employees who may be reporting sick with a cold. Add to that the Republic Day fever, when several brands — especially retail — went into ‘tiranga’ mode, with patriotic promotions. But there were two campaigns that really stormed the internet — the FWD by Myntra ad featuring Vishwanathan Anand and D Gukesh, crafted by Braindad, which had the chess stars ad libbing playfully on generational gaps; and a Puma campaign introducing its new celebrity brand ambassador.

For a week Puma sported a new name — Pvma — changing many of its store signages, putting out ads with an altered logo, leading to conjectures about a rebranding or even typos. What was the brand up to? The suspense ended when Puma announced that PV Sindhu was being onboarded as a brand ambassador. In fact, when a post on X shared an image of a Puma store signage with the “wrong” spelling and wondered, “who did this”, the badminton star replied with a cheeky “I did”, ratcheting up the views and likes.

It turned out the brand was paying homage to Sindhu by adopting her initials in its name temporarily. It also signalled the brand’s entry into badminton gear.

What was brilliant about the activation was that it created curiosity, noise, amplification, and buzz without the brand having to spend too much on media. Typically new brand ambassador sign-ups are greeted with a yawn as it is a fairly routine affair. But Puma managed to memorably etch the association in the consumer mind.

Interestingly, the whole thing was conceptualised in-house by the Puma marketing team. We reached out to Puma India Managing Director Karthik Balagopalan to find out how the bold idea came about.

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“One of Puma’s strengths is untamed creativity,” said Balagopalan, adding, “The activation was totally the Puma way. It’s a tone of voice that authentically belongs to us — it is very bold. It was conceptualised and ideated by our in-house marketing team, who are very well-rounded and high on energy.”

While celebrity endorsements can be a double-edged sword, Puma has been acing this consistently, cleverly using Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma. For instance, the video where Anushka challenges Virat to a game of cricket with unconventional rules won hearts. Does the brand have a specific strategy?

“It is very important for us to have a marriage of minds when it comes to celebrity endorsements. There’s a commitment to shared values. We call it the Puma personality. The relevant elements of the asset, the ambassador, along with the cultural fitment for the brand is very critical for us to engage in a long-term, multi-year association,” says Balagopalan.

Does Puma choose the ambassador based on the sport, or the personality? “I think many athletes transcend their sport. They inspire people across categories. We look at people who are either in sport or at the intersection of sports and culture, because sport is today’s lifestyle. We work with people who are engaging and relatable to the local audience,” he says.

The athleisure category is growing — Puma was a late entrant but has had a surprisingly strong showing in India. How is the brand looking at the growing competition though? “We like to say that we were the last to enter India, but were the first to lead,” says Balagopalan. “Overall, I think we are still scratching the surface of the sports market in India. Though sneakerisation is growing. And premiumisation is increasing — both of which bode well for the industry. There’s space for everyone to play.”

Although Puma has a play in other product categories too, Balagopalan says footwear is pretty much where the brand anchors itself.

Any trends for 2025? “We see the low-profile silhouette in sneakers making a huge comeback. We have the Puma Speedcat, which is one of the hottest sneakers at the moment (also ranked by Lyst as top 3). It’s seen across the global fashion capitals and is touted to be the next ‘It’ sneaker,” says the Puma MD. The brand is on the prowl.