Sport Chek is making big gains in the way it reaches female consumers. While its previous marketing efforts targeted women mainly as wives, mothers and household shoppers, the retailer is now speaking to female shoppers as athletes. Marketing spoke with Sport Chek’s SVP of marketing and ecommerce Frederick Lecoq on how the brand went from “women stupid” to “women smart,” and the next play in its marketing plan.
Late last year, you referred to a time when Sport Chek was “women stupid.” What did you mean by that?
Women were not seen as the point of entry to sport. [The female segment] was kind of an afterthought in terms of targeting because marketing was very gender-based. The common thinking was you can’t talk to both men and women at the same time. You have to choose.
The second piece is most of the sports brands have been going after [men] through performance and strength. I think for everyone in the sports industry, the shortcut was sports equals testosterone, equals sweat. And that was a trade off. Women have been left aside because the thinking was they could not compete with men when it came to strength, performance and so on. I think it was a big miss and a big mistake. Even from a product perspective, the whole focus was making sure men were satisfied with our assortment. [Our marketing] was also really focused on men. There were very few women in our ads. We were talking about diversity in sports, but not diversity in gender. It was just common thinking that women weren’t part of the equation.
When did you start to shift away from that?
Three or four years ago, we started to look at women differently. When we did our whole brand research in 2012, we realized the market was more segment-driven than gender-driven. The feedback from the research was really that the point of entry was not gender as previously thought. The point of entry was activity driven. And that was kind of an eye opener.
How do you approach marketing to women now?
First, you need to get away from the cliché when you speak to women. The common thinking about women was it’s all about beauty or seeing women as stay-at-home moms…The best way to [approach] it is don’t see women as different because at their very core, they’re not that different. They’re athletes, they’re heavy runners, they’re super active. We were being exclusive and we need to be inclusive. So, we stopped targeting by gender [and now] target by activities and that’s a big change. It all starts by saying men and women all do something in common. Let’s not focus on difference. Let’s start focusing on the similarities. By doing this, we got away from all the clichés.
How has that come to life in your marketing?
So, that’s the thing. The execution is going to be a little different. For example, the way women and men shop is different. We need to activate different touchpoints when it comes to the retail relationship than we do with men. We know women love reading, so the implication from a brand perspective is we need to tell more stories. Social media plays a critical role with women as well, and the way women shop is influenced by [things like] social reviews… Women are really focused as well on brands… and there are iconic brands today that have also made the shift to be women inclusive in the way they launch their collections. I think Nike has been doing tremendous work with women and Under Armor is doing tremendous work with women as well.
We started to feature more women in our ads as well. We had the [Mother’s Day commercial] with Meaghan Mikkelson, [an Olympic gold medalist in hockey]. The partnership with the Canadian Olympic Committee was kind of a tipping point when we started to connect with women as athletes. Spending some time with [Canadian bobsledder] Kaillie Humphries has been an eye opener for me. She’s so far away from all those clichés and now she’s even racing against men. Kaillie Humphries is actually – excuse my language – kicking men’s ass in some bobsled competition. And that’s amazing, what she’s doing… So [for us], it’s not men and women… it starts with sports, it starts with the activities. It may be a different activation, but [we] don’t start by looking at the differences.
It’s funny because [featuring more women in ads] pushes you into bringing more emotion in the story you’re telling. Women are looking for that emotional connection. We started to soften our advertising a little bit since [our umbrella campaign] All Sweat Is Equal. We stopped focusing 100% on performance and something that’s unachievable, and being more women-engaging. From an execution standpoint, the story is important, the emotion is important, and you have to connect, but you have to get away from those clichés. You have to get away from ‘I want to look good,’ or you have to be married with kids.
Did you worry about alienating your male audiences?
That was a risk, but I think things have changed and the men’s mindset has changed as well. I don’t think men now see women as different. [But] one thing we need to fix is enabling women to gain confidence in sport and enabling that confidence on a regular basis. Confidence in the brand I buy, confidence in the activity, and getting good advice. I think that’s something that’s still missing.
What results has Sport Chek seen?
I can’t give too many numbers, but what I can tell you is that our women business is growing by more than 20% every year. And that’s 20% on big numbers. In retail, when you’re growing double digit, it’s big. When you’re posting more than 20% sales increase on a strong baseline, it’s just unbelievable. It’s huge potential for us. I wouldn’t say we’re starting from scratch, but we were not playing in the top league for women. We were serving women, but we were serving women more in a commodity way and less as being women being a sports athlete.
What’s next in terms of your marketing-to-women efforts?
The journey to enabling women to be active and get active in sports is on the way. We need to do that from an assortment perspective, but also from a functional and emotional perspective. That confidence in sports is a critical piece. Women want to get in sports, and sometimes they need to get good advice. Our store staff being a coach to women, helping them to choose the right gear and do the right things when they get into sports, I think is a critical piece. We’re going to continue our strong connection through social media and our strong need for our brand to tell stories, not just advertise.
Looking at the shopping environment, we need to reinvent this because I don’t think right now we’re 100% mapping women’s standards when it comes to shopping. We’re not there yet. But, in our flagship stores, we’ve been trading off some brands to increase the women’s offering. We’ve been saying instead of carrying 70ish brands, we’re going to carry fewer brands, but we’re going to go deeper in assortment to make sure that any woman can find anything she wants. That’s from a brand perspective, but also from a sizing perspective. We don’t want to carry just small sizes; we want to carry the widest possible assortment for women who want to be active in sport. We’ve been doing this in the stores and the results are just tremendous.
