Title	D ROSE JUMP ROSE
Brand	ADIDAS
Product/Service	ADIDAS 3.5 BASKETBALL SHOES
Category	A06. EVENTS & EXPERIENTIAL (INCL. STUNTS)
Entrant Company	TBWA\LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Advertising Agency	TBWA\LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Steve Tidball	TBWA London	Creative Director
Nick Tidball	TBWA London	Creative Director
Walter Campbell	TBWA London	Director
Nick Gilberg	TBWA London	Editor
Chris Bosher	TBWA London	Strategy
Peter Souter	TBWA London	Chairman And Chief Creative Officer
David Barton	TBWA London	International Account Director
Natalie Spooner	TBWA London	Agency Producer
Petra Tiziani	Freelance	Producer

The Campaign

The NBA all-star and adidas athlete Derrick Rose was going to be in London for just one day, and we had exactly 2 hours of his time to turn him into an urban brand icon. Our target audience? Kids on council estates whose lives and environment mirrored the violent Chicago neighbourhood Derrick Rose himself grew up in. The problem? While he’s a household name in the US, in the UK no-one has ever heard of him outside of the minority who play or follow basketball. Our brief? Make these kids, who are often cynical and hostile towards brands in their neighbourhood, care about an athlete and sport they knew little about. We knew we had a role model in D Rose – someone who had risen out of one of the most violent neighbourhoods in America through sheer effort and commitment. Now we had to present him to kids in a way that was authentic and inspiring. So we created The D Rose Jump Store – their chance to show themselves, and the world, how talented they might be at a game many had never played. Instead of buying their attention, we created an idea they were desperate to share: ‘free shoes if you can jump 10ft.’ With no paid media, we got kids talking by connecting D Rose’s story to their own. In just 2 hours we created positive opinion about an athlete few knew, changed behaviour around a sport few play, and elicited trust amongst a group who distrust authority.

The Brief

The client had two key objectives. First, position Derrick as an adidas brand icon to a young, urban London audience. Secondly, use his visit to make adidas the most talked about brand in London. We would be judged on the noise we generated, and the sentiment we created. We knew from talking to our target audience of teenagers in the Hackney area that whilst 100% knew who adidas were, only the minority who played and followed basketball had any awareness of who D Rose was. Our job was to convert the positive feeling about the brand to the player.

Results

Kids started queuing 8 hours before the store even opened, and over 2,500 turned up to watch the action. The kids who jumped didn't just show themselves how talented they were, they showed the world. The resulting online film reached 370,000 views in the first 5 days, and was shared by 8% of those who watched it, including key global basketball websites. Our #jumpwithdrose reached 327,000 Twitter users. We achieved the highest ever UK search volume for D Rose, and we delivered conversation volume 20x higher than Nike’s in the same period. We achieved 4 million online impressions, equivalent earned media value of £2 million, and positioned D Rose as a vehicle for change. But one statistic outshone all others. In the following days and weeks, kids in over 30 countries around the world, from Australia to Zimbabwe, begged adidas to open a D Rose Jump Store where they lived.

Execution

First we picked a location for the pop-up-store designed to get people talking. The Community Centre we were going to convert sits in between the local college and a series of tower blocks. 3 days before the live event, we went to a local youth basketball tournament to hand out business cards with a map and image of the store to coaches, community workers and kids. At the same time, we launched #jumpwithdrose on London’s pirate radio stations, using free shoes as payment. We also put free posters up in local chicken shops within a mile radius. On the day we drove conversation through our #jumpwithdrose, by including it on the façade of the building. Our online film then allowed basketball and sneaker blogs around the world to run the story, whilst a hyper local exhibition celebrated the kids who jumped on their streets. The campaign ran as planned.

The Situation

The NBA all-star Derrick Rose was going to be in London for 24 hours, and we had 2 hours of his time to turn him into an adidas brand icon for an urban teenage audience. The challenge? Basketball is a minority sport in the UK. And outside of a handful of hardcore fans, no-one here knows who Derrick Rose is. And whilst boosting the player’s profile in a vertical fan base is a worthy task, icons deserve a much broader audience and a much bigger profile. This usually involves the massive budgets and media spend we simply didn’t have.

The Strategy

These kids are cynical and often hostile to brands in their neighbourhood. So we did what felt most authentic. We went and told them about the idea ourselves, face to face. We believed that the idea would resonate with them regardless of the differences between our background and theirs. At the same time we reached out to contacts in different fields – youth basketball, pirate radio, youth workers, telling them about the idea too. All of this worked together to build hype. The idea was then perfectly positioned to generate earned media. We had an original, physical challenge for kids into basketball. A once in a lifetime opportunity to meet D Rose for NBA fans. A new product release for sneaker heads. A design concept for the creative community that work in East London. And an event that inspired kids who’d never played basketball to try it for the first time.