Adidas Originals Facebook Ad Case Study
Adidas Originals Facebook Ad Case Study
Adidas Originals Facebook Ad Case Study
Adidas
Company Background
adidas is one of the leading sports brands in the world, with a broad and unique product portfolio spanning apparel and footwear for professional athletes, to authentic streetwear and premium fashion apparel. The global brand, headquartered in Germany, currently focuses on five global priorities: Football, Running, Training, Basketball and the Originals label, positioned as the iconic sportswear brand for the street. Recognized by its distinctive Trefoil logo, adidas Originals has many dedicated retail locations around the world.
Objective: To increase the number of people who connect to the companys Facebook Page among targeted consumer groups and to generate video engagement. The company also sought to reposition one of its mainstay brands. Solution: A nearly six-month long campaign on Facebook featuring Premium Video Comment Ads driving to highly original and engaging content Key Lessons: Facebooks targeting capabilities can enable a brand to reach its target market in this case 18- to 34-year-olds in a much more targeted and comprehensive way than traditional advertising media A campaign on Facebook that capitalizes on the platforms ability to let brands engage with customers in an original way can increase traffic to websites and stores.
Objective
In early 2010, adidas Originals launched a global, cross-media campaign designed to reinforce its position as the brands premier lifestyle offering. Originals is the category through which adidas has reintroduced or reinterpreted many of its most recognizable heritage products, such as the white-and-green Stan Smith tennis shoe. But it is also intended to meet the fashion and style needs of todays pop-consumed, trend-savvy 14- to 25-year-olds. The brand was seeking to establish an identity that was clearly aligned with its youthful consumer base through original audio-visual content and tone of voice, but that was only half of the battle. adidas also needed a home base from which it could display and distribute all its exciting new content. Whats more, it was looking to build a network of appropriate consumers made up of its target group to become ambassadors for Originals throughout their spheres of influence. adidas Originals settled on building this hub with its Facebook Page the free public profile that enables companies to share their business and
products with consumers on an ongoing basis. One of the companys main goals was to increase the number of people who connected to its Page. Facebook was the ideal place because through its Page, the brand can tell a rich, engaging, continuous story, says Chris Barbour, adidas global head of digital marketing for the sport style division, while also leveraging the unique targeting capabilities of Facebooks advertising offers to ensure that it is driving fan growth with the ideal consumer set. The hope was that increasing engagement with its connections on Facebook would pay off in brand loyalty and in more traffic to its website and stores.
Approach
The brand campaign adidas Originals launched in early 2010 was intended to reinforce its image and identity through a series of content pieces, launched episodically each month on YouTube, blogs and other online media outlets and on Facebook. The campaign ran in 11 countries including Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Each piece of content was created to highlight and support a particular collection including the Originals Star Wars collection (shoes inspired by the sci-fi classic) in January, the Augmented Reality collection (shoes with code in their tongues that unlocks access to interactive experiences) in February its Womens collection in March. For each of these monthly peaks, Originals purchased a burst of Facebook Premium Video Comment Ads targeted against very specific consumer attributes. The company took advantage of Facebooks anonymized targeting capabilities to aim its advertising at people who listed Star Wars, science fiction, fashion, Lady Gaga and other keywords in the Likes & Interests section of their profiles. The ads were intended to prompt users to view the entertaining content, comment on it and spread it virally to their friends on Facebook. The ads for the Originals Star Wars collection, for instance, featured arch-villain Darth Vader with the text telling users The Death Star is waiting for you to choose your next target. Clicking on the video ad took people to a highly engaging application that handed them control of the deck of the Death Star. Integrating a maps app, users could blast a street anywhere in the world, ultimately revealing the adidas Trefoil. The Originals Womens ad, meantime, teased users with the text Who needs a catwalk? Clicking on it led to a kinetic video in which adidas models filmed other models, singers and actresses to showcase the new line in a seductive streetscape. To maximize exposure, adidas ran several reach blocks, media buys on Facebooks homepage that guarantee an ad reaches 100 percent of its target audience over a 24-hour period. All the content had a key purpose: driving people to become connected with the Originals Page, where the brand could continue the conversation with them about new products, events, sports and other
topics relevant to its customers. One of the things that makes Facebook so powerful for advertisers is that it doesnt require consumers to learn how to interact with your brand, says Chris. Its natural the platform and its extensions present opportunities for brands to become a part of the innate, familiar ways that consumers are already communicating with each other.
The ability to target consumers with a message and hold on to them as committed brand ambassadors which Facebook allows is unlike anything that the world of advertising has ever seen.
Chris Barbour Global Head of Digital Marketing Sport Style Division, adidas
Results
Over the course of the Originals brands campaign between January and June of 2010: 228,928 users connected to the adidas Originals Facebook Page by liking it a 6 percent increase. The total number of impressions delivered over the course of the campaign was more than 343 million, with more than 15 million of them organic impressions. adidas Originals video ads generated more than 722,000 direct engagements. Nearly 3.9 million people had as of early September connected to the adidas Orignals Facebook Page, making it one of the top 20 brand pages on Facebook. On the day of a reach block in March, traffic to the adidas website increased 139 percent. adidas has seen a steady increase in Originals store traffic over the course of its presence on Facebook with many customers noting interest in a particular product because they saw it on Facebook.
have been had by consumers about things theyve seen on Facebook. So we absolutely know that the community that were building on Facebook is, at least in part, the people who are coming into our stores, which is great.
The Future
adidas Originals says it plans to further emphasize turning its fan base on Facebook into active commercial brand participants. It will seek to do this by exploring emerging areas of engagement such as social commerce and social gaming. The company intends to continue to maximize Facebooks ad solutions and targeting capabilities to bolster a following of interested, like-minded fans that it can naturally convert to customers. We consider the consumers that were connecting with on Facebook to be more than fans, says Chris. They are a part of the global adidas Originals family. As such, we believe that we must treat them with the appreciation, respect and commitment to relationship that is appropriate for ones most beloved family members. Our strategy of frequent, enlightening, entertaining posts has fallen out from this belief.
The ability to target consumers with a message and hold on to them as committed brand ambassadors which Facebook allows is unlike anything that the world of advertising has ever seen, says Chris. He adds that the brand has also seen an increase in store traffic as a result of its activities on Facebook. Literally, weve been told by store managers that there are conversations