An exclusive interview with Vicente Berbegall, Ecommerce and Digital Leader, Decathlon Japan
Company Profile
- Headquarter Country: France
- Industry: Sporting goods (online and offline Retail)
- Hit Products: Tents, sneakers, trekking goods, outdoor.
The Challenge: Large scale ramp-up
- Before contacting Next Level in 2017, Decathlon was operating Digital Marketing internally. The challenge was to optimize, scale up, and increase brand awareness in order to pave the way for the first physical retail shops to open in Spring 2019.
The Solution
- Next Level quickly built product and environmental knowledge to adapt campaigns in real time to changing conditions.
- Closely integrated with Decathlon’s internal team, Next Level proposes optimization measures and budget allocation changes in real time proactively to adapt campaigns to customer desires, seasonality, and competition.
About Decathlon Japan
“ Bring a global leader to become a local leader in a new country is a race. Our CEO, myself and everyone in the team love and practices sports. Go the extra mile, push the limits, work as a team, all these fundamental drivers in sports are equally important in business.
Rise up to Japanese consumers’ product expectations, UI expectations, then the thrill (and enormous work!) of our first physical store, what a race!
In Digital, we needed a parter to help build the brand, increase awareness, while delivering short-term revenue at the same time, and Next Level was that partner. ”
Decathlon tents and outdoor products, famous in Japan and other regions
How did Next Level contribute to your business expansion into the country?
“ If I had to summarize it in four words, I would say:
Passion: Next Level is very passionate about products. Unlike larger agencies who work with large portfolios of Clients, Next Level coming from product sales themselves, they learn and understand ours product deeply, and apply the knowledge to advertisement.
Efficiency: In any business, the ultimate KPI always ends up to be revenue and Next Level absolutely delivered on revenue and ad spend optimization.
Speed is another of their strengths. They quickly adapt to shifting situations, maximizing overall result for the brand, according to the various marketing objectives: branding for the physical stores, our first one last year in Sannomiya, and our next one in Makuhari, and RoAS for online sales campaigns.
Speed was also key during the coronavirus crisis, a challenging time where everyone had to shift priorities in sales channels and product portfolio strategies, moving from the seasonal outdoor best sellers, to products for indoor fitness maintenance.
Teamwork: I really consider Next Level as an integral part of our Decathlon team. ”
Brand Passion
Most Decathlon members enjoy their favorite sports with passion. Next Level’s team actually share that passion and become some of our biggest fans. In fact, our Account Executive at Next Level even privately became one of our Decathlon brand ambassadors!
Can you mention a few concrete results?
“ Yes, for our revenue focused campaigns, progress was clear: thanks to Next Level, our ROAS increased by 38% (between May 2018, first month NLJ received account from previous agency, and May 2019).
At the same time, our CPA got down by 57% during the same period. ”
Vicente Berbegall
Ecommerce and Digital Leader
Decathlon Japan
Download a PDF version: Decathlon Japan