 My parents advise me to go into theater and focus on that, and I think that understanding where your passions lie, no matter how counterintuitive they may be, that's a great piece of advice that I got very early on and have really clung to my entire career. Hi, I'm Stephanie Patric, executive editor of Ad Week, and welcome to Top of Mind. I'm here today in the Ad Week headquarters in New York with Adam Petrick. He is the global director of brand and marketing for Puma. Adam, thanks so much for joining us from Boston today. So you've been at Puma for about 20 years, it's a long time. I'm curious to know, what is the thing right now that you're working on that you're most excited about? Well, I mean, literally today it's got to be basketball. You know, last night we started the season, we're back in the sport category for the first time in almost two decades, and it's taken up a lot of my thoughts right now and something we're really excited about. What's your involvement with basketball? How are you guys? Well, basketball, I mean, as a responsible for marketing and the brand, basketball has been a major tool for us to get heat and gain interest from the consumer and the U.S. market in particular. Basketball as a sports category is potentially the most fertile territory for us to cross over sports and culture, art, music, fashion, all the stuff that our consumers are interested in. So it's been a great place for us to really play with the brand. And are you partnering with certain players or teams? Yeah, sure. Danny Green last night, Toronto Raptor from last season's championship team is now in the Lakers. Great game, 20 points last night. He was wearing our new shoe, we just dropped a new shoe a couple days ago. That's got to be good when they win in the new shoe. Well, he didn't win actually last night, but it's okay, in a great game. And the Lakers are a fantastic team. I'm curious to know, what innovations do you see coming down the road that have the most potential to change the way that you're doing business? You know, I'm not a big ad tech guy, but I think that as we expand as a brand, as we get a little bit bigger in terms of the consumers we want to reach, I think that understanding how to leverage data, how to do some, you know, let's call it mass customization of the brand experience for our customers, that's really an interesting territory for me to explore. Like I said, my history hasn't been in the ad tech space and so it's a new territory for me, so I'm doing a lot of research, but I think that's an area that I'm really curious about. I feel like customization is something that I've really seen bloom in retail just in the last year. Do you see that as a fad or do you think it's going to keep getting? I think it's an expectation. I think that at this point it's table stakes. Our consumer, you know, for 15-plus years has been customized in sneakers online, not with Puma necessarily, but with our competitors, and I think that's an area that we have to be in. What is the thing that's keeping you up at night? I think we have a very established track record, as Puma in the U.S. in particular, as a style brand, as a fashion brand you might call us, casual, you know, classics, these are words that come to mind I think when the everyday consumer thinks about Puma, and that's not necessarily where we want to see our brand in the future. We want to be a brand that's blending culture with sports. You know, sports performance is the spine of our brand. We've been a performance brand for 70 years, you know, making products that support elite athletes and performing at their best. And, you know, that's the message that I've got to bring to the consumer in the U.S. and make sure that they understand, you know, we're a sports brand first, and a classics brand of course as well. But, you know, that's the thing that's most concerning to me. Yeah. And in terms of demographics, are you trying to press into any new areas? Are there consumers who... I mean, it's funny, I was having a conversation with somebody the other day and they were talking to me about, you know, the old rule that bigger brands have more customers, which is, you know, the dumbest, stupidest thing you can say, but it's true. And I think that as we grow, we have to push into broader demographics. And we've had a pretty decent brand strength with a core demographic at the center of the sneaker business. But we've got to get a little bit older, we've got to get a little bit younger, and I think we have great opportunities in both areas. We have a good kids business, you know, and that's, you know, laying the groundwork for brand loyalty and presence with younger consumers and then older consumers, no puma from, you know, years ago. And the first time that we were, you know, popular in this market. So that's something that I think, you know, is going to take up a lot of focus over the next couple of years and broadening that reach. My last question for you, because we always like to leave our viewers with a takeaway. What's the best piece of advice that you've ever received or given? My parents advise me to, you know, go into theater and focus on that. And I think that, you know, understanding where your passions lie, no matter how counterintuitive they may be, that's a great piece of advice that I got very early on and have really clung to my entire career. You know, something I've gotten from my current boss. You have to plan for longer term success. You can't just plan for tomorrow's success. You have to plan for what you're going to look like in five years and ten years. And think about that and keep your North Star as, you know, as distant as possible so that you can really, really be thinking about all the different possibilities of what can come your way. Adam Petrick with Puma, thank you so much for joining us today. Happy to be here. And thank you for joining us for Top of Mind.