Chapter 17/ Advertising and Public Relations

When it comes to action sports culture and selling its products to youth, Vans is one of the best. Vans takes advantage of more than 40 years in business to analyze what its audience wants. Vans advertisements reflect the rebellious, free spirit of its youth audience and culture. The company's advertisements routinely feature professional athletes like Nick Remon and Anthony Van Engelen.

Vans uses frequent product advertising to consumers to sell their shoes, apparel and accessories. The company is built on selling action sports products and not much institutional advertising is used if at all. In the following product advertisements, Vans primarily uses pioneering and competitive images. Over the years, Vans has introduced many new products and competes against major action sports brands like DC for consumer attention.

This is a pioneering advertisement for Steve Caballero's "Half Cab II" sneakers which features a new design from his old model of sneakers, the "Half Cab". The ad provides information about the design of the sneakers and all of it's newer benefits to spark interest in its consumers.

This above featured competitive advertisement strikes the audience as "cool" and shows Vans shoes to be something that is in style. The ad's catch line is "Go Native" so the person who sees the brand can remember Vans as a brand that is native to California. Vans products identify with the Californian surfer/skateboarder lifestyle and the images in the ad are very similar to it. This is a great way to attract potential consumers.

Vans advertisements appear in magazines, on websites, at music festivals like the Vans Warped Tour, skateboarding competitions, billboards, mall posters, on action sports retailer websites and other places with youth traffic and activity.

Vans' public relations efforts can be experienced through their special events such as skateboarding and surfing competitions promoting the brand to targeted audiences, contests that draw customers to the brand by allowing them to win prizing and apparel, and phone applications like "Vans Hub" for the iPhone which helps hype products and direct consumers to local retailers. The Vans "Arts" page online features artists who work with Vans and creates a community of artists who are loyal to the Vans brand.