Onitsuka Tiger is the brainchild of Mr. Kihachiro Onitsuka who founded the company in 1949 after studying a High School basketball team in Kobe. During the 1940's in Japan basketball was growing in popularity but because it was still a relatively new sport the team was playing barefoot. Mr Onitsuka studied the team, listened to their needs and developed the first basketball shoe, the basketball shoe was a very basic model and as such Onitsuka was looking for ways to improve the design and functionality of the shoe. The answer to his quest for a shoe with outstanding functionality came one night as he starws down at his plate of octopus; the suckers on the tentacle. This was the basis for his suction cup sole, the suction cups worked so well that the testers for this were sticking to the floor and falling over. After many trials he developed the perfect sole with optimum grip and this paved the way for what would grow to be a company that prides itself on innovation. One of the most popular styles of shoe is the Mexico 66 which made it's debut at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, the Mexico 66 showcases the now iconic Tiger Stripes on both sides of the shoe.
It has only been during recent years that Onitsuka Tiger has really hit the spotlight in the marketing environment but it's true what they say about "fashionably late". The first Onitsuka Tiger campaign was scattered around Cannes during the launch of Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino, as the worlds journalists descended to global film festival. Onitsuka Tiger developed Chinese take-out boxes that included shoelaces wrapped as chopsticks, a pair of signed Onitsuka 'Taichi' sneakers in golden yellow and fortune cookies. Each pair was hand delivered to more than 1,000 of the worlds most influential cultural leaders and journalists (Goodson, 2007). Onitsuka Tiger has become a brand that is adept with using all facets of marketing promotions and campaigns to maximize publicity and over the next three weeks I will be reviewing each campaign.
