Insight
The launch of the official World Cup (WC) ball is a unique opportunity for Adidas to boost brand confidence amongst global media, retailers and shareholders.
Observing the way stories break in social media before being covered by official news organisations, Carat knew adidas would win big if it could influence the social conversation BEFORE the press got hold of the story.
In 2010, the Jubalani ball was at the centre of a negative PR storm, tarnishing the brand globally. The agency needed to banish this memory and exploit globalisation and convergence to deliver the most innovative and commercially successful ball launch in Adidas's history.
Internal customer data identified Next Generation Youth as most valuable consumer to accelerate the conversation if provided with short, quirky AV and photography featuring sports and entertainment talent. They wouldn’t watch the official TV draw (where the ball was revealed) as their first screen experience would be through mobile.
Armed with single-minded channel, content and platform insights Carat needed a bold solution and an integrated ecosystem to help scale it at the ‘speed of NGY culture’.
Strategy
Interact with the ball both physically or digitally, through a fresh and new perspective using multiple touch-points and 360 degree camera angles. Carat built a strategy – using global partnerships with Twitter and Google to full effect – to drive engagement, word of mouth and scale.
At the heart of this launch was a hero film and an engaging @brazuca live commentary on Twitter. Through these it pushed the ‘unofficial’ launch of adidas’ World Cup journey and would alert the world to the exciting experience it would be hosting across its digital ecosystem – from Twitter to YouTube to adidas.com. The agency adopted a 3-step roll-out:
Seed – tease the ball ahead of launch (3-5 Dec)
Launch – launch with impact on a global scale (6-10 Dec)
Sustain – support the hero film across December and pull people into the ecosystem (11-30 Dec)
All of this laid the foundation for an exciting and interactive launch platform to kick-start the Road to Rio.
Execution
Carat challenged Adidas’ formulaic multi-local OOH approach to launching a match ball and developed a global real-time digital experience. @brazuca personally delivered the content that would fuel the audiences’ conversation.
Twitter and YouTube were identified as the right global media partners to deliver the scale, infrastructure, innovation capabilities and commercial value required. The agency leveraged these partners centrally in real-time during the WC Draw across 12 markets and 8 languages.
A global YouTube homepage takeover incorporated 360 degree ball-cam embedded into advertising units, giving an interactive “balls eye view” of the content. The agency shaped a calculated ‘Twitter Storm’ by rolling out content featuring A-list celebrities and athletes, activating their millions of followers, scaling the most engaging tweets with real-time paid boosts.
It delivered effective innovation to make @brazuca the first use of a @handle on a Twitter trend ever. Crucially, it linked all content experiences to commerce so that the huge conversation around the ball was converting directly to e-com sales.
Results
Adidas dominated conversation with 56% share of branded football conversation on the day, 50% more than Nike. Brazuca is the fastest selling football in the history of adidas, achieved with 40% less budget versus 2010.
Positive sentiment for the ball improved by almost 60% versus 2010 and there was not a single piece of negative coverage in the press.
This launch has laid solid foundations and @brazuca now has over two million Twitter followers – a record for Adidas!