‘Boost Your Run’
by Adidas
Campaign Context…
Adidas created this campaign ahead of the 2015 Hongkong marathon. When they conducted market research to run a new campaign, they uncovered a new trend – running was evolving from a individual sport to a social activity, people starting to run together in small groups.
Recognizing that customers are interacting with their product in new ways, Adidas decided to adopt a new strategy to appeal to this newly forming habit. They started to explore ways how they can engage their customers and form an emotional bond between the brand and the runners.
As the new finding suggested that if running has become a community occasion, people will make choices like a set of people which is different than a individual buying decision.
Targeting one individual would not make much sense when people are making a choice together, it would be better if the brand can be a tool that furthers this new habit of running together.
The video shows how Adidas came up with an idea to keep itself relevant to the customers. They designed a campaign to highlight this companionship between fellow runners.
The first thing they did was to create a community of running enthusiasts, they named it #TeamAdidas. Each participants got a bracelet that would track their stats.
The runners were supposed to join the community, complete the day’s event to earn points that could be exchanged at brand stores for rewards after the campaign was over.
The video also shows what were the results from the campaign. As you can see Adidas could generate very good engagement among the user base which helped the brand be a part of the customer’s daily life.
Our analysis of the campaign…
Adidas is one of the top sports shoes brand, so it’s very important to put all efforts on strengthening the brand if they were to take someone like Nike who believes in having a very powerful brand.
Today, customers are no more interested in superior quality product, they take it for granted, they are seeking to buy the brand that resonates with their identity.
One of the 5 constant human truths is belonging, which is one of the greatest desires of all of us. You would have heard the saying – we humans are social animals. It’s a fact, we crave for association, especially in today’s modern age where everyone is connected online but disconnected in real life.
As Adidas found it’s customers are hanging out together for running regularly, it signaled the brand that it will have to somehow find a way to form a bond through its product in order to be the preferred choice in the customers’ minds.
So, it was natural to scale the new habit of running with friends to a larger activity of running with even bigger community of athletes who share the same passion for the sport.
Adidas could have just run marketing campaigns to portray people coming together and running and it would have been a beautiful story to watch, but it certainly took liberty of involving the customers in the story,
not just telling them how great their product was, but aiding the participants to come together and run as a community based on their shared passion and creating new real life experiences with fellow companions along the journey with the brand just being a facilitator.
By tapping into the customers’ emotions and connecting with them deeply, the brand became a part of their daily life conversations – spreading word of mouth organically through UGC on social media.
In our opinion, a perfect example how a brand should act today. It’s no more about your differentiation, the customer today is looking for a connection. If you can give them a reason to associate with you though your brand stand, you will also make a great brand for your customers.