PUMA leaps ahead: Shreya Sachdev on the brand's out-of-the-box strategies

Championing women’s sports has always been at the core of PUMA’s initiatives, evolving each year to stay relevant while driving meaningful change. Recently, while announcing PV Sindhu as its brand ambassador, PUMA took a bold step by temporarily rebranding to PVMA.

With a striking campaign, the brand sent a powerful message that women’s sports deserve equal investment and can drive the same excitement as men’s. In 2023, the brand challenged gender biases in search algorithms, ensuring both men and women appeared for non-gendered terms like Indian Cricket Captain.

In 2024, PUMA encouraged women’s viewership of women’s sports with its Women’s Premier League campaign, featuring Kareena Kapoor Khan, Faye D’Souza, Vineeta Singh, Masaba Gupta, and MC Mary Kom cheering for cricketers from the stands.

“Our approach focuses on consistently showing up for our women athletes. People have realised that our brand messaging on women is not a one-off for us. If we are onboarding a woman athlete, people today expect PUMA India to communicate about it in a big way with an out-of-the-box narrative, which for us is the biggest validation of what we stand for,” shares Shreya Sachdev, Associate Director and Head of Marketing at PUMA India.

Beyond cricket

As a sports brand, PUMA also invests heavily in the sporting ecosystem beyond cricket. The brand supports athletes who are contributing to the growth of the system as well as those who are growing through the system. PUMA onboarded Avani Lekhara much before she won Gold at the Paralympics and became a household name. Through their association with Lekhara, PUMA was able to build a story of inspiration. Another such success story is that of the cricketer Nitish Kumar Reddy. “There is no way to predict success, the only thing you can gauge is potential. As a sports brand, we are always investing in great athletes,” Sachdev says.

Some of the athletes PUMA has supported through their journey to sporting success have also become commercially successful. “We invest in athletes across sports, genders and abilities. Investing in the ecosystem also helps us build our credibility as a sports brand. This credibility comes from supporting people who have broken barriers and stereotypes and achieved big despite massive setbacks and resistance,” she explains.

Athletes also deliver unparalleled value and insights for sporting brands. “It’s not just about putting athletes in our clothes and featuring them in the ads. It’s also about how we leverage their ecosystem, learn from their experiences and challenges, and build products that can help them perform better. We look at them as partners and not just faces,” Sachdev highlights.

Beyond professional sports

PUMA’s commitment to sports extends beyond professional athletes, focusing on growing the sporting ecosystem and fostering deeper engagement at the grassroots level. With fitness gaining momentum in India, the brand has identified running as one of the fastest-growing sports and has made significant investments in the space. Instead of relying solely on celebrity endorsements, PUMA prioritises on-ground engagement, creating opportunities for direct interactions with consumers.

Through diverse running initiatives, from local meet-ups to city-wide events, PUMA ensures that running is not just an individual activity but a shared experience. These events often start and end at PUMA stores, where trained specialists provide personalised guidance on footwear based on individual needs, whether for training, race day, or injury prevention. This hands-on approach allows the brand to understand consumer preferences, identify challenges, and offer solutions that enhance performance.

Earlier this month, PUMA partnered with Bumble for a unique Valentine’s Day singles run event, driven by the insight that running offers a perfect opportunity for social interaction through fitness. “It’s great for us that fitness and sports are picking up because it opens up the space for us to do a lot of interesting things,” Sachdev shares. By focusing on creating meaningful experiences over simply promoting products with ads, PUMA was able to tap into a fresh space where fitness, social connection and fun come together.

Beyond product sales

“Our goal has always been long-term brand building, not short-term conversion or focusing on specific products. We only spend on things that we know will organically do well. When you do that, you compound the reach — you gain more by spending less. We have also always believed that the best time to talk is when others are not talking about it. Because then you just get to a market that's completely yours for the taking,” Sachdev explains.

Speaking about the importance of balancing branding and performance, Sachdev shares, “I think the mistake that a lot of people make is that they look at performance and brand as opposite ends of the spectrum. The two work together. If you spend on just brand and not performance, you create a massive pool on the top of the funnel but you are not able to direct them to the bottom of the funnel. You have to supplement and complement it enough with performance to see the impact across the funnel.”

She adds, “If you do spend on performance and not brand, your cost of conversion is very high. When you spend on both, it becomes much lower.” For PUMA, the ratio of adspends on brand and performance shifts year-on-year as per priorities. It can be 60:40 or even 50:50. Typically, the brand spends about 85-90% of its spend on digital.

Beyond purchases

PUMA has been an early adopter of quick commerce opportunities. Back in 2019, the brand was selling its Team India jerseys on Dunzo during the World Cup. The brand’s Royal Challengers Bengaluru are also available on quick commerce platforms. Sachdev believes that the opportunity to leverage quick commerce at scale is finally here.

When it comes to product categories suitable for different channels, there’s an obvious segmentation between fast-moving products that generate more volume and high-value products that boost the top line. It’s the fast-moving products that do well online — across brand stores, e-commerce and quick commerce.

PUMA has observed clear consumer preferences for the point-of-sale based on product types and price points. “For somebody who wants to try the product, they will go to a store. We largely sell our running products from stores because, at such a high price point, customers want to try them on, run on the in-store treadmill, see whether it works for them, and ask questions to our staff before purchasing,” explains Sachdev. “But something like a lifestyle shoe is bought primarily for style. If it looks good on the website, customers just order it without needing to visit a store."

PUMA has also developed strategies to address the discount-driven nature of online retail in India. “If we have a running shoe that’s our high-value brand-defining product, we won't discount it anywhere,” says Sachdev. “We also separate products across different channels to prevent price comparison issues. Some of our core, exclusive drops will only be available in stores, while others might be on our website but never discounted. Products we want to protect are kept exclusively on our owned channels where we have complete control,” she concludes.