What do you guys think about Oakley's Marketing efforts and strategy ?

Do you think they do everything well, or is there anything you feel they should do differently ?

Is their target consumer the right one(s) ?


School project...and I thought it might be an interesting topic so...post away everyone !

Haha, I'm also a Marketing major and any chance I get to incorporate Oakley into my projects, I for sure do it.


My opinion on Oakley's marketing is that it is doing very well. They definately have their feet in the markets that they want. How many movies and TV shows and commercials have you seen with Oakley's in them? I've personally seen tons. This isn't an accident. They have such subtle Marketing but at the same time, they still do well. It's very similar to high-end brand marketing where there is very minimal advertising, but more product placement in the sense that there isn't a Gucci commercial saying "Buy our clothes" but they are in lots of movies and on lots of celeb's, and people notice that stuff very often.

i think they are doing very well in the usa, maybe international they should put more effort in..

They're based in the US, so it's more of their focus currently IMO. Cross-cultural marketing is really hard, and very expensive to market to each country individually. I think this is why the product placements in sports through athlete sponsorships are the way to go. No matter what country you are from, when you see an athlete win a major competition sporting the O, it looks good and you want them.

they're much better at niche marketing than they are in marketing to the population at large. most print ads are in core-sports mags, rather than say, Sports Illustrated.

the key though, is sponsorships, that's where most of their exposure comes from.

marketing for women is pretty scarce, though they have taken a fair amount of sales from more traditional designer brands (much more than I'd have thought anyway).

no i mean like you don't see ads.. in our case.
justin how is it going long time no hear from you. how's school ?

Some thoughts off the top of my head:

When someone says 'Nike' I think of the swoosh and the ads first, the product second. The reverse is true for Oakley. Why? I don't know.

I hate people trying to sell me stuff, so that's a point in Oakley's favor, since they don't have obtrusive ads. For those ads I do see, I thought the ads that featured the product prominently were nicer than those that feature athletes.

The Time Tank, Crosshair, GMT and some of the other new stuff oozes sex, money and power. Are skater kids and other street athletes the best ones to use to sell that stuff? (I know they're amazing at what they do, but still) That said, Oakley does a good job of marketing to different niches and keeping it separate. The golfers don't impinge on the street sports who don't impinge on the motor sports etc.

They've done a brilliant job of brand recognition which makes every pair of sunglasses, shoes & every article of clothing a walking advertisement. But as far as traditional advertising methods, I as a fan wish there was a lot more but I think they're doing a good job now. I totally agree with the movie thing. I was watching the X Games & when I saw that they were partially sponsered by Oakley, I was hoping that there was going to be a commercial.

Oakley is doing pretty well internationally. Any country that is active in motorsport, would definitely have some knowledge of this brand.

Oakley is endorsed by Nicky Hayden on motogp, and of course the ducati team. It is worn every race weekend by top formula one drivers as Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa.....and yes JPM. but hey...his signature spike series is really nice~ and the splice too.

Extreme sports...you name it. Oakley's there. A lot of ppl know the brand, the only thing is they never tried them on to compare to their cheaply built designer sunglass.

In Europa their name isn't as well know as say Nike.
Therefore their product placement in movies etc isn't as effective as it should be since it relies on a subconcious connection to be made between the product and the brand name.
Hence they should put more effort in brand name recognition. I feel enigmatic, movielike commercials like "session 1242" and "max fear light" are perfect for European audiences. Sadly I've never seen them aired here.
Thruth be told I never saw any Oakley publicity outside my OPD shop.

One other thing: Oakley should really make their online store available to international buyers.

I have to agree with Iwan - probably because we pretty much live at the same part of this planet. Even today, I meet a lot of people that have never heard about Oakley; especially women.
Back in the days when Edgar Davids used the blue Racing Jacket, Oakleys brand recognition was extremely high. My guess is it were Oakleys sportmarketing managers were responsible for him using Oakley. After that, M:I 2 did a good job with the Romeo. But that's about it.
Personally I wouldn't mind finding advertisements in the major magazines. On the other hand, I don't think Oakleys turnover here in Europe is big enough to make up for the budget. Except for the Paris' billboards during Silmo.

I just noticed that it looks like oakley is making a huge push for the 20's market and younger, they are doing lots of banner advertising on . Just saw it for the first time a few days ago and its just different banners pushing the new custom O stuff.

In my opinion Oakley should stick to this marketing strategy what they are doing right now. In my country you don't see ads neither on TV, nor in written media. But they do sponsor the biggest freestlye motorcross event in the country and lots of Olympic champions (almost every time they"re wearing M-Frame or HJ).
I think if you don't see the brand everywhere, then it'll have something special and unique touch. I always liked having stuff, that (almost) nobody had.

I agree with Lali :-)