adidas
‘are you in’ Campaign
EWA integrated communications and profiling strategy instrumental in adidas ‘are you in’ Campaign
For over sixty years adidas has been producing sporting goods for an array of different sports and has built a reputation as one of the world’s leading brands. adidas has been a client of EWA for the past ten years and has utilised the full portfolio of EWA’s services, from dedicated contact centre functions and bespoke customer insight reporting, to digital marketing, CRM consultancy and promotional campaign management.
During the winter of 2009/10 EWA entered a partnership with adidas to create a major UK CRM strategy which would incentivise consumers to update their profiles. The ultimate purpose of this partnership was was to improve consumer understanding and to develop marketing messages during run up to the London 2012 Olympics which were highly relevant to each consumer’s interests.
In March 2011 adidas launched the ‘are you in’ campaign, a multi–faceted marketing exercise which spanned the entire product offering and utilised myriad channels such as social media, digital marketing, television and experiential events, including competitions. As adidas’ CRM partner, EWA would play a vital role in communicating marketing messages to consumers whilst raising awareness and handling logistical elements of the experiential events.
Name the Olympic Football
Key to enhancing adidas’ customer insight was a data capturing exercise which would provide adidas with more in–depth consumer profiles. Primarily, competitions were used as the mechanism of encouragement, incentivising those on the database to update their profiles with details of the sports and products they were interested in.
The first of these competitions was to name the London 2012 official match football which captured consumer data using a customisable iFrame. The competition, held in February 2011, preceded the launch of the ‘are you in’ campaign by one month but acted as a valuable preparatory exercise.
The next step of the exercise was to follow up the data captured from the name the ball initiative with another competition, this time however, consumers were encouraged to fill out a more in– depth profile with the chance to win Olympic tickets. This was enacted by EWA using an email marketing campaign and accomplished significant advancements in adidas’ customer insight.
The data capture exercise provided invaluable intelligence into the consumer base. Through EWA’s bespoke Customer Insight models and reporting, adidas were then provided with the data and means to plan and implement successful, targeted marketing campaigns in the future.
The ‘are you in’ Music Event
As part of the wider ‘are you in’ marketing campaign adidas organised a music event featuring acts such as Plan B, Example, Caspa and The Enemy. This campaign consisted of mini competitions and a finale event.
The prizes for the mini competitions included the opportunity to socialise with the acts in various settings and utilised the bespoke iFrame to capture the data from each entrant. This data was then used to invite competition entrants to apply for tickets to the finale event; a secret gig held at the intimate Scala Club in London.
The response was considerable, and from the entrants just 300 winners were picked at random. The lucky 300 were then sent e-tickets via email by EWA, whilst the club was simultaneously given a full guest list for the event. In addition to the 300 exclusive tickets, ten VIPs were selected to have access to the ‘Secret Bar’, which would give them the opportunity to spend time with the stars during and after the gig. The ten VIPs were informed via email and later phoned by EWA to congratulate them on their prize.
Retaining secrecy and exclusivity for the event was essential and as such the ‘are you in’ Music campaign had a demanding timescale. This required EWA to operate an out of hours contact centre to ensure attendees’ enquiries were effectively managed.
Throughout the planning and execution of the event EWA played an important role working with adidas’ marketing, PR and social media departments as well as external agencies. This logistical activity ensured that the winners attended and that the event was a success; a point reiterated by Plan B who stated that " It was great to do a gig that was full of adidas competition winning fans, as the place had such energy as a result."
‘are you in’ competition MTV footage
The ‘you call the shots’ Campaign
adidas also utilised EWA’s communications and profiling capabilities during the you call the shots campaign, held for the launch of the new adidas Predator football boots. This was another competition although in this instance, profile information was utilised in order to target the campaign towards those which had previously shown an interest in football.
The premise for the ‘you call the shots’ campaign was that consumers were invited to send their ideas in for a football related event, which would then be turned into a reality with stars such as Kaka, Nani and Robin van Persie in attendance. The ideas would be ranked using a voting system and would rely upon integrated email and social media communications to publicise the campaign.
Of the ideas entered the top fifty entrants were selected to take part in the winning event. The winning idea was for ‘Football Paintball’ which featured the top footballers kicking paint soaked footballs at the attendees. In addition, those who had entered ideas were informed via email that they could apply for tickets to the event on a first come, first served basis. e-tickets were then issued to successful applicants utilising EWA’s email capabilities.
The secretive nature of the event and the surprise location created significant logistical challenges and required EWA to send invitations, cater for any cancellations whilst finding replacements and to issue tickets within a restrictive timeframe. These processes had to be completed without jeopardising the secrecy of the event, which was deemed paramount to prevent overcrowding. The ‘you call the shots’ campaign demonstrated that EWA’s integrated approach to promotional campaign management was fundamental to success.
‘you call the shots’ Campaign footage
adidas’ Future Marketing
At all stages of these competitions EWA played a vitally important role providing proactive logistical support, balancing the requirements of multiple stakeholders, whilst ensuring that impeccable standards of consumer care were maintained. This role was provided in the face of the extreme pressures associated with tight deadlines and inter-agency management.
As well as campaign management however, EWA have used all of the events and competitions within the ‘are you in’ campaign to consistently build the adidas consumer database and improve profile information along the lines of interests, gender, age, demographics and source.
This ongoing data capture exercise takes advantage of the opportunities presented by experiential events. It uses them to improve adidas’ understanding of their consumer base through insightful reporting and analysis, demonstrating how CRM can be used in the future to build brand advocacy.
adidas is a Tier One Partner of the London 2012 Olympic Games and will be offering sporting goods to each of the 26 UK Olympic sporting teams; the ‘are you in’ campaign has now concluded and has provided valuable consumer insight during the campaign. Furthermore, the campaign management, data capture and profiling services provided by EWA will continue to give invaluable consumer intelligence, helping to shape highly targeted and relevant marketing campaigns in the future.
