Neymar and Puma outplayed everyone!

All right , I am here once again to discuss Neymar and Puma and of course the Puma King football boots that Neymar will now be wearing .

I made a video discussing this announcement yesterday and I shared the opinion that I didn't think Neymar wearing Puma Kings was the best case scenario from a marketing standpoint , not for Neymar but for the Puma brand trying to sell as many football boots as possible , which I have to assume is the reason why they paid a ton of money to endorse their brand and their products .

And somehow through what I thought was fairly logical criticism , people twisted and turned it into me hating on Neymar , which was not the case at all .

In fact , in the very first minute of that video , I defended Neymar and his decision to leave Nike and sign with Puma because that was the right decision for him from a financial standpoint with all of that said , I think this is a very interesting discussion topic and I've always been fascinated by the psychological aspect of of sports marketing when it comes to consumers .

And there's a lot to talk about with this particular subject So I want to clarify some things that I talked about in that previous video and I want to answer some of the questions and comments that you had with some other information that I think will hopefully open at least some people's eyes in regards to what exactly has happened here .

And I want to make this 100% clear .

I am not hating on anybody here .

Why is this guy always hating on Neymar ?

I know it's not back to back videos like this , but I don't normally make videos on specific players and their boot contracts .

But if you guys would like to see more of this on the channel , don't forget to support this one with a like and if you are new here watching for the first time and don't want to miss out on weekly content on everything .

Football boots , make sure you hit that subscribe button .

I will now refer to my notes .

So one of the number one comments that I got on that previous video where people were disagreeing with , what I had to say is they said that Neymar himself chose the Puma Kings , which is entirely possible , but we'll never know if that's actually the case because we have to understand that Neymar has signed an endorsement deal with Puma where they have paid him millions of dollars to represent the brand in a positive light .

In other words , they have paid for his endorsement , they have paid for his opinion and they have paid for his choice .

Let's not forget that two weeks ago , he was still in negotiations with Nike to resign with the brand and they didn't want to pay him the money that he was asking for .

So he ended up signing with Puma had he signed with Nike , we wouldn't be hearing Neymar and Puma King in the same sentence .

And if you still want to choose to believe that all of these choices are genuine , then you also have to believe that Neymar now hates Nike Mercurial boots even though he's been wearing them his entire career because he's now signed with Puma and he loves the king .

The point of an endorsement deal is basically the right to use Neymar's name and create Neymar's opinion in the form of this elaborate story where Neymar wants to follow the footsteps of all these great players that wore the Puma King in the past and he is now destined to return the Puma King to its former glory .

It's an amazing story .

It's a really cool concept .

It's obviously why Puma went with it .

But is it really reality given that Neymar was trying to sign with Nike just two weeks ago and is now signed with Puma ?

All of a sudden , he's destined to follow in the footsteps of all of these other players .

I mean , it's a little far fetched .

Let's also not forget that during Neymar's time with Nike again in an endorsement deal type situation .

Neymar chose to wear the Nike hypervenom Phantom too , but he only really wore the hypervenom Phantom two for about a week until Nike had to make him a custom pair that was basically a mercurial vapor disguised to look like a hypervenom .

So even though he was the main face of a football boot that he had chosen to wear , he didn't actually wear that football boot .

Something else that a lot of people chose to ignore is that Neymar is going to be wearing the same version of the Puma King platinum that everybody else can go and buy at the store .

When we know that's not the case , guys like Neymar professional players in general , especially ones with big endorsement deals are going to get custom boots .

So even though the boots that Neymar will wear will look like the Puma King platinum , they won't necessarily be exactly like the ones that you can actually buy .

There are also people saying that maybe Neymar just wants to wear leather boots .

Now , he's sick of mercurial , he's sick of knits , he's sick of synthetics .

He wants something that's purely based on comfort .

And again , that is entirely possible .

Although I find it very strange given Neymar's very well documented professional career from a very young age , he's not even had a sniff at a leather football boot and all of a sudden simply two weeks after ending his contract with Nike , he has acquired a taste for leather football boots .

That again just seems a little bit far fetched .

Something else that a lot of people took issue with was me saying that they put Neymar in a football boot that's been out for over a year and nobody's really cared about .

And what I found out in my statement is that a lot of people simply didn't even know that this football boot has existed for over a year because there's been that little attention on it .

Obviously , with the announcement of Neymar joining the Puma brand and now wearing the Puma King Platinum has brought a lot of excitement to this boot that otherwise has not been there for well over a year now .

So in that regard , has Neymar's influence affected the popularity of the Puma King Platinum directly .

Absolutely , it has .

But the reason why I don't think this is a great idea is there's a lot of hype right now .

It is basically the 1st 36 hours of this announcement , but let's say three months from now , are they going to be able to maintain hype around a simple leather football boot that really goes against all of the trends in the football boot industry over the last decade .

And to somewhat prove my point on this on Instagram earlier today , I posted a picture of a pair of football boots that have been in my background since January , which is when this color way of the Puma King Platinum came out , posted a picture of them saying , hey , leaked upcoming color Way of Neymar's Puma King Platinums .

What do you think ?

And then I left a few spaces .

So you the press read more and then it says , oh , wait , these came out in January but nobody noticed and there were tons and tons of comments saying , wow , those are really cool .

Wow .

I've never seen those before .

There was more interest on a poking platinum post than there has ever been in the history of me posting pictures of poking platinums and I got tons and tons of DMS of people doing investigative research saying , hey , I found these for sale at some place they're available early or something like that .

But no , it was just legitimately that many people that did not pay attention to the Puma King whatsoever until Neymar decided that he was going to wear them .

That ladies and gentlemen is a perfect example of the power of influence , which is exactly what Puma have paid for .

A lot of people also suggested that Neymar's choice to wear the Puma King could be attributed to his attempt at maturing as a person and as a player and choosing to wear something that is black and white rather than a little bit more flat .

I , I think that now you're attributing personality traits to football boots , which is even more ridiculous than something like boots by position .

But hey , if that's what you want to believe , go for it .

I really think that the reason why the boots are black and white at launch is to relate them back to the Yi Puma King , which of course is the point of this whole storytelling situation that Puma have gone for .

I can almost guarantee you that whatever the first name , our color way is that gets released to the public , that isn't this initial launch one , there's gonna be some stuff and that leads us into what I mainly talked about in the previous video and that is Puma's decision to not put Neymar in their brand new speed boot .

The Puma Ultra 1.1 that is not only just the Mercurial competitor , the football boot that Neymar has been one of the main faces of for almost the entirety of his career aside from that little hypervenom stint , but it also happens to be a fantastic pair of football boots and arguably the best speed boots that the Puma brand has ever .

And granted the Neymar Puma King story that they came up with was really good .

But think about this for a second , you have a guy that as of two weeks ago was one of the main faces of the Nike Mercurial line and he jumped ship to a competing brand to wear their brand new speed boot .

And you can now claim that Neymar because a lot of people don't understand the concept of an endorsement deal has jumped ship from Nike to Puma because he likes the Puma ultra better than the Nike Mercurial .

The Nike Mercurial series happens to be the most popular line of football boots on the market .

And like I talked about earlier , Neymar's demographic is going to be younger players in terms of the people that he's going to have the most significant influence over in terms of driving sales of football boots specifically .

And I think that a lot of players that have been wearing Mercurial because of Neymar , they are far more likely to jump ship to the Puma Ultra than they would be to a black and white or just relatively plain leather football boot in the Puma King platinum as great as it is .

I can't think of a single example of a football boot that has gone from zero to hero based on one single endorsement deal and the Puma King platinum didn't have interest as good as it is when it first came out .

I don't think that the interest is going to be long lasting even with Neymar pushing the boot where the Puma Ultra being a more high tech being a more I guess Neymar boot in terms of the football boot marketing that's been put out by all of these brands over the last 20 years .

The concept of a speed boot , the concept of a heritage boot boots by position .

This is all stuff that exists based on sports marketing and while what Puma have done is shocking with Neymar wearing the Puma King and it kind of goes against all of the sports marketing .

It's very contradictory .

And I think it's going to be very difficult again , long term to convince people to switch out of a pair of Mercks or to switch out of these modern high tech football boots and back into something that is quote unquote old school .

There are also a lot of people that suggested that they're putting Neymar in the Puma King because the Puma King does the least amount of sales of the three lines within the Puma brand .

They already have guys wearing the Ultra , they already have guys wearing the future , but nobody's wearing the Puma King .

They're trying to boost the sales and I'm sure that's what they're trying to do .

But then I also look at it from this perspective , every single football boot that has been successful has been by far the most popular within its specific brand .

If you look at the Nike Mercurial series , Nike sells way more mercurial than they do any of their other lines .

And I think that the potential in terms of the peak popularity of a Puma King versus a Puma ultra with Neymar being the main influencer of the sales of that particular product .

I think that the ceiling is much higher for a pair of Puma ultras where the ceiling for a pair of Puma Kings is significantly lower .

And I'll use this as an example .

These are just completely hypothetical numbers , but let's say they could sell 10 million ultras and then a million kings and a million futures .

Let's just make these numbers up or they could sell three million ultras , three million futures and three million Puma kings , which would be the better situation .

I think the peak popularity not only brings more notoriety and more attention to the brand , but I also think that it builds a reputation a lot better where yes , I know they're trying to build up the reputation of the king .

Again .

It is such a big part of Puma's history in football boots .

But you have to keep in mind what the reality of the football boot industry right now is .

And I just don't see a football boot like this again going from zero to hero based on what has historically been popular over the last 10 to 15 years .

There's a reason why when it was rumored that Neymar was going to sign with Puma , it just seemed like the obvious choice to put him in the Puma Ultra .

It had just come out , the timing would be perfect in that regard .

You have one of the main faces of the Mercurial line for a very long time , a super influential guy and he's switching in to one of their main competitors when their football boot is as good as it has ever been in this particular category .

Again , he'd be getting a pair .

So what's available at retail doesn't really matter all that much in terms of Neymar's actual football boots .

That to me would have just been a more compelling marketing strategy .

Again , if the goal was to sell as many football boots as possible , maybe that's not their goal .

If that's the case , then , hey , they made a good call with the Puma King .

They certainly surprised a lot of people , but that was kind of my point in the previous video that I made and I guess a little bit in this one is that while I think there's a lot of hype right now , I still think that the long term hype would have been a lot better if he had been wearing the ultra rather than wearing the king .

And I guess I should say that a lot of people have also suggested that maybe Puma is just going to have him wear the kings for a couple of weeks and then switch them into the ultra .

Once they have a signature color we made up , that's entirely possible as far as what they're working on for the future of Neymar within the Puma brand .

I'm sure he's going to get signature color ways .

He might even get his own signature model .

But again , they literally just signed this guy as of a few days ago and they really only had two weeks notice , they couldn't possibly come out with something custom and release it to the public so quickly .

So we're going to have to wait and see what they end up doing .

But if he does end up sticking with Puma Kings for an extended period of time and they don't swap into a new model for , let's say , six months .

I don't see this strategy working out that well , in terms of translating to actual sales , all this say that it's ok to be influenced by sports marketing and endorsement deal situations like this one , but just realize the reality of what's going on and don't just base your opinion on what you are told because often what you are told in the case of these marketing stories is just that a marketing story and not something that's really based in reality .

With that being said , when I was 14 years old , did I buy Nike T 90 Laser Twos ?

Just because Fernando Torres wore them ?

Yes , I did .

Anyways guys , that's it for this one .

Hopefully you found this interesting .

Hopefully you learned something .

Hopefully I opened your eyes to what the reality of this situation actually is .

If you did enjoy this video , please don't forget to support it with a like if you have any questions or comments of your own , leave it all down below in the comment section .

Again , I think this is a very interesting topic to discuss .

If you aren't subscribed to the channel already .

Make sure you hit that , subscribe button along with the little bell notification .

So you get notified when the next new video goes live , you can find all of my social media information linked down below in the description as well .

Other than that guys , thank you so much for watching and we'll see you in the next one .