LONDON: Sports brands such as adidas, Under Armour and Nike are ramping up their efforts to attract female consumers, building on the popularity of the 2012 Olympic Games among this audience.

"We are making a concerted effort to create engaging content and experiences that are tailored to women from the outset, designed to reach girls in the environment they already inhabit online and provide them with increased opportunities to interact with our brand," a spokesman for adidas said.

One of the ways it is doing so is via a Twitter community: #mygirls encourages women to encourage and advise one another in their athletic activity.

"Whether you're part of a sports team or a tribe of friends we want them to go all in and join #mygirls to become part of something bigger," the spokesman continued.

Under Armour, a US brand, has also identified the women's apparel category, which already accounts for some 30% of its sales, as a battleground in which it can effectively take on its more-established rivals.

The company is running a campaign with the slogan "No matter what, sweat every day", which includes a mobile app that lets women document and share their daily workouts.

Charles Denson, president of Nike Brand, recently said that "our women's running business is incredibly strong", and that the firm's new apparel products for this audience had been a great success. As a result, "we are starting to scale that on a much faster pace," he said.

The way in which these brands approach women should also reflect wider reality, Simon White, managing director of creative marketing agency Momentum UK, told Marketing Week.

"Sports brands are finally realising that women represent not just consumers but also shoppers for the rest of the family and consequently represent a far more lucrative segment than males from a volume perspective," he said.

Data sourced from Marketing Week, Seeking Alpha; additional content by Warc staff