The footwear brand is planning a series of global retail partnerships to promote the 20th anniversary with new footwear and clothing ranges, and campaign activity through its agencies M&C Saatchi, DDB and Glue.
Reebok is gearing up for its presence at urban wear tradeshow Bread & Butter in Berlin this summer, where its key new Pump ranges will be unveiled.
Low-key promotional activity has already started. ‘Reebok Pump 20th Anniversary' has already sponsored menswear designer Christopher Shannon's London Fashion Week show this year, which saw the designer show new Reebok designs the Reebok Ex-O-Fit SG and Reebok AXT Pump trainers which inspired his latest collection.
The original Reebok Pump was a collaboration between Reebok's Paul Litchfield and industrial design firm Design Continuum. It was released in 1989, as a basketball high-top shoe.
The 1990s saw Reebok promote the shoes with celebrities such as Greg Norman, Bill Walton and Michael Chang with the strapline ‘Pump up and air out'. Partly describing the Pump operation and partly a stab at rival Nike's Air cushioning, the Pump campaign proved popular for Reebok.
Despite its price of around £100, it became something of a status symbol on urban basketball courts and eventually in suburban high schools. After the success of the basketball shoe, Reebok designed pump shoes for football and other sports.
The Pump will be one of two main focuses for Reebok's brand this year, with the other being women's fitness. Having created Step Reebok back in the 1980s, Reebok is also back tackling gym workout trends for women.
Reebok has formed a partnership with the Cirque du Soleil to unveil a global initiative called Jukari, a women's fitness campaign. Focused on lunging, swinging and pulling on a circus-style bar hanging from the roof - the Flyset - Jukari takes the tagline ‘fit to fly'.
Already launched in Miami, Reebok plans to take the fitness initiative to the UK in gyms such as the Reebok gym in Canary Wharf.
The class will launch in top gyms in twelve cities around the world including Hong Kong, Mexico City, Madrid, London, Krakow, Munich, Seoul, Kuala Lumpur, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Montreal and Los Angeles.
The launch of Jukari will be supported by a global integrated marketing campaign throughout 2009. Running online, outdoor, in store and in print in key markets worldwide, the campaign will feature Fit to Fly action imagery and Reebok On The Move and Reebok Cirque du Soleil apparel and footwear.
To complement the initiative, Reebok has also created two collections of women's fitness apparel and footwear - On the Move and the Reebok-Cirque du Soleil collection.
The Reebok-Cirque du Soleil partnership and Jukari Fit to Fly workout are the result of insights into what women really want from exercise. A survey of 15,000 women across 25 countries in 2008 found that while nearly half of all women know that exercise and keeping fit is very important to their overall health, less than 25% participate in fitness often. Reebok research found nearly two thirds (61%) of all women would work out more if it was more fun. More than half (54%) felt exercise was a chore.