ASICS Lets Hot Air Out of Shoe Ads : Marketing: Fountain Valley firm to piggyback its commercials on the big-budget campaigns of Reebok and Nike, poking fun at the concept of ‘pump’ shoes.

Athletic shoemaker ASICS Tiger Inc. wants to deflate “The Pump” with some hard-sell tactics and a little gel.

The Fountain Valley-based distributor of ASICS Tiger shoes is launching a television advertising campaign next week poking fun at what it calls “gimmicky” basketball shoes.

The company’s ads will particularly target basketball shoes made by Reebok International Ltd. and Nike Inc. that feature tiny air pumps that inflate the shoe for better foot support.

But some might say that ASICS Tiger, a Japanese-owned company, is resorting to a marketing gimmick of its own.

No pumps for ASICS Tiger, just a bit of “semifluid silicone-based substance permanently encapsulated in pads” beneath the heels and balls of the feet.

The 30-second commercial begins with two players meeting on the playground for a one-on-one basketball game. The guy wearing brand X (read Nike or Reebok) remarks that his competitor, wearing ASICS Tigers, cannot possibly win because he isn’t wearing pump shoes.

While the two men are shooting baskets, the player wearing brand X stops repeatedly to pump his shoes with everything from a bicycle pump to a big motorized air compressor.

Not surprisingly, the ASICS player wins.

As the commercial ends, a voice says: “ASICS Gel-SpotLytes: The light shoe for pure basketball performance. Anything more is a lot of hot air.” There is a hissing sound, then fade to black.

The commercials will air on the NBC and Fox networks as well as several cable stations. The ads do not name Nike or Reebok but the comparison is implied, said Linda Nielander, an ASICS Tiger spokeswoman.

“We believe we’ll raise a lot of eyebrows and have a lot of people chuckling that a company like ASICS has the courage to take on the big competitors,” Nielander said.

ASICS Tiger, which had sales of $140 million last year, will spend $10 million in 1990 to market its basketball shoes in an effort to grab a bigger share of the market, Nielander said. She said that is just a fraction of what the larger companies are spending.

Basketball shoes make up about $4.5 billion of the $7-billion athletic shoe market, said Angela Keith, a spokeswoman for ASICS Tiger.

She said the ASICS Tiger commercial will piggyback on the big-budget ad campaigns of Nike and Reebok.