Fila to Shift $25M to Burnett Global Push

Fila is close to consolidating its worldwide advertising at Leo Burnett, Chicago, pumping the account up by some $25 million and setting the stage for a global image campaign that should break early next year.

Fila, which gave Burnett its $15-20 million domestic account in July, is looking for a unique brand position in a category riddled with me-to marketing. The company is scrapping its two-year-old brand theme, "Change the game," and looking at creative concepts that would stress Fila's European roots in a more unique take on sportsmanship. Howe Burch, Fila's svp-advertising, wouldn't comment on the agency assignment, but acknowledged that Fila was trying to develop "a global communications strategy appropriate everywhere, with local adaptability"

"The position is the Italian heritage of the brand and within a sports context to distinguish them from fashion brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Nautica," Burch said. "It is not all about win at all costs or competition is war, which is where some of our competitors are."

On the domestic front, where Fila's spending has slowed considerably ($4.2 million Jan-June, '98, compared to $19.5 million in all of 1997), the company will probably launch the Grant Hill V shoes in November without TV ads, in deference to the NBA lockout. "We did not want to be in a position of producing a spot and then finding there is no season," said Burch.

Fila is expected to load up on media (it has a Turner NBA package) in the first quarter of 1999 and Burnett will produce a commercial supporting the release of a different colored version of GH V and the relaunch of GHI. The original GH will be part of a Renaissance line, the first initiative of new president John Epstein, who engineered the same sort of retro strategy while at Adidas.

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