Adidas: Breaking The Pattern With Adidas Glitch [image]

Credits & Description:

Title: Breaking The Pattern With Adidas Glitch
Agency: Iris Worldwide, Possible
Brand: Adidas Football
Country: USA
Entrant Company: Possible, Seattle
Advertising Agency: Iris Worldwide, London / Possible, Seattle
Production Company: Iris Worldwide, London / Possible, Seattle
Ecd: Pablo Marques (Possible)
Director Business Development: Marc Makowski (Adidas Football)
Global Communications Manager, Special Projects: Miriam Keck (Adidas Football)
Senior Manager Digital Experience: Hans-Eric Noyons (Adidas Group)
Agency Producer: Laura Jane Justice (Iris/adidas)
Creative Director: Iain Robson (Iris)
Creative Technology Director: Stuart Thorne (Possible)
Design Director: Wojciech Zalot (Possible)
Ux Designer: Pontus Persson (Possible)
Global Planning Director: Michael Barrett (Iris/adidas)
Managing Partner: Nico Tuppen (Iris)
Senior Designer: Mariana Lobos (Iris)
Senior Art Director: Tarik Bedevi (Iris)
Senior Copywriter: Ric Blank (Iris)
Account Executive: Jasmina Cigoja (Iris)
Design Director: Jose Paz (Freelance)
Lead Mobile Developer: Peter Schmiz (Possible)
Business Director: Von Branton (Possible)
Senior Project Manager: Julia Sz.Kis (Possible)
Senior Ui Developer: Istvan Makary (Possible)
Senior Motion Designer: Laszlo Szekeres (Possible)
Execution:
We intentionally started small, with a core group of influencers and urban footballers in London. This allowed the community to grow gradually and organically. By making it exclusive and limited in number, the customer experience was more personal. Players could book an appointment to try the boots on the pitch, joined by influencers and fitting advisors. We fed our audience’s desire for instant gratification by making the process of purchasing the boots quick and seamless. The mobile app allowed boots to be bought on the move and delivered within 4 hours, anywhere in London. There was 24 hour chat support from the same influencers who helped build the community.The app held key customer data and preferences, allowing players to order fresh new designs as they are released. And it facilitated a three-way dialogue between the brand, the influencers and its customers.
Outcome:
GLITCH trended immediately and boots were in demand from day one. Players took to social media begging for referral codes from their contacts. We made it into the ‘HOT this week’ list in the Apple app store in our first week. We even saw access codes being sold on eBay.Despite the controlled release, the GLITCH app has had over 60 thousand downloads in the first six months. The codes seeded by our first influencers had a 75% conversion rate to a boot sale and we’ve continued to see an 89% redemption rate on codes being activated.All without a scrap of media spend, zero advertising or sponsorship & no celebrity endorsement.GLITCH transformed one of football's most recognisable brands into one of its hottest start-ups. It turned the industry upside down and created a completely new relationship between a brand and consumer.
Relevancy:
A mobile e-commerce app with CRM at the core. You can only book fittings or purchase the product with an invite code. All interactions happen within a custom built platform. As a result the product is CRM driven from launch onwards, allowing the brand to continuously collect data and learn the preferences of their users, whilst still delivering value. We offered them a community and rewarded them for maintaining it.
Strategy:
Football is changing – players are growing up playing in small squads and urban academies. Their idols aren’t premiership players, but freestylers: players that can literally do the impossible and get respect for their style of play as well as their ability to win.This audience isn’t watching TV, following Drogba or reading magazines. They’re online on their phone, watching YouTube, learning tricks, sharing their skills and finding opportunities to play. They can’t be won over by the usual marketing mix, we had to find a new way to connect. We launched without any media spend or ads, no big star player and no shops or online stores. Putting the influencers and our mobile technology at the heart of the strategy, hosting unique and highly relevant content, created for them, by peers, influencers and home-grown football talent in their city. Restricted by special invite codes, that weren’t available to everyone.
Campaign Description:
GLITCH is both a brand new football boot concept AND a brand new route to market for adidas. The product itself is completely different, featuring an inner shoe for perfect fit and a laceless outer skin that offers perfect ball control, but is also interchangeable allowing players to express their own style. This new football boot is ONLY available for purchase through a dedicated mobile app, which was designed and built to make GLITCH a must-have for the new football stars - urban street players whose freestyle play is as dependent on the style as it is the score. This platform opens to purchase through special one-use referral codes. You literally cannot get your hands on these boots unless you are invited by another GLITCH player, adding exclusivity and creating a community around the product – a community fed and managed by influencers, not marketers.
Synopsis:
Start-up culture is ripe with experimentation and originality. Risk breeds creativity and these are the companies driving meaningful change in our industry.But… If you’re a successful, well established company delivering year-on-year growth as the no.1 Football brand in Europe, how do you break with tradition and reap the benefits of change? How do you behave like a start up?You have to break all your own rules, build a team with autonomy and give them all the confidence to experiment.The objective was to launch a new type of football boot, in a completely new way. Boot sales and profit came second to customer engagement and loyalty.Introducing GLITCH, a game changer from adidas.