The Big Interview – Reebok

Sportindustry.biz caught up with Matt O’Toole, Global Head of the Reebok Brand at the London launch of the new Reebok brand symbol, the Delta. O’Toole explained the brand’s redefined strategy, why the sport of fitness is the future of training and the importance of the UK in Reebok’s plans.

Could you tell us more about the Reebok rebrand and the new Delta logo?

We have introduced the new brand mark which is our symbol of our fitness ambition and what Reebok is doing as a brand. It centres around our idea that as a brand we want to bring people to a more active and healthy life and the Delta symbol is a symbol of change throughout the centuries. We designed it with three sides: one is the physical, the other is cognitive and third represents the social aspects of fitness. We believe that by being active and physically strong that will transfer to the rest of your life.

We felt like to really signal to the rest of the world that this is what the Reebok brand is about we needed to put forward this new symbol.

One of the ideas around the new Reebok strategy is creating the ‘Sport of Fitness’ – can fitness create the same social and community atmosphere as traditional sports?

Well that is our strong belief, Reebok obviously has a strong sport background. When we decided to really focus on fitness, we saw that the things that make sport great aren’t really present in the traditional fitness world. In the traditional fitness world you are typically on your own with your headphones in. But what really keeps people engaged is the passion and the comradery. So we found fitness leaders like CrossFit, Spartan and Les Mills who are really into this idea of fitness being a more social activity. That is our form of fitness, when you adopt the attitudes of sport to fitness it becomes a lot more engaging.

I think the primary problem people have with fitness is they leave it because it is a solitary journey and when you change it to being a social journey and you have a group that you are doing it with it makes it a lot more engaging.

Could you tell us more about Reebok’s partnerships with CrossFit, Spartan and Les Mills?

Our first partnership was with CrossFit which we signed almost four years ago. A few of us at Reebok started doing CrossFit ourselves and realised that it was the closest thing to participating in sport that we have ever done. You could just see even then, despite being quite a small movement at the time, that it was really the future and that fitness needed to be redefined as a sport.

What is the importance of launching in London?

London was the ideal place for us. It really is a place with so many of what we call the ‘fit generation’. By that we mean people who are young, maybe just out of University, who are living their careers and what has become important for them is an active life through experiences. We thought coming to London, where CrossFit is booming and things like Spartan is going so well, would be a great bridge for Reebok. A lot of these movements were born in America but you can see they are translating into a global phenomenon.

What is Reebok’s ambition for the future?

We want to be the new form of fitness, rejecting the mirrors, machines and solitary type of fitness by introducing the world to a more socially engaging form of fitness. We want to turn the fitness world on its head and our job in that is to provide the gear, providing great apparel and footwear. We have brought together some of the top athletics designers in the world and created an entirely new collection.

We have also opened new retail stores called Fithubs, there are seven of them here in London. They are all part of this new expressive form of gear for the sport of fitness.

With Reebok being such a long-standing brand, how hard is it to re-define what you stand for?

I think it’s part of a journey rather than an event. It’s true to who we are, Reebok was founded here in England by Joseph Foster who back in 1895 invented a running spike for competitions. At that time it was a fringe activity, and I think that’s how we look at it now – that we are going back to our roots. We are trying to say that those involved in the sport of fitness are the future of activity and athletics. I wouldn’t be surprised if events such as CrossFit, Spartan and Les Mills ended up in the Olympics one day.