| Title | THE FINAL VAULT |
| Brand | ADIDAS |
| Product/Service | #HERETOCREATE |
| Category |
E05. Influencer / Talent |
|
Entrant
|
TUTKOVBUDKOV Volgograd, RUSSIA
|
|
Idea Creation
|
TUTKOVBUDKOV Volgograd, RUSSIA
|
|
Production
|
TWENTY | TWELVE Moscow, RUSSIA
|
Credits
| Dmitry Tutkov |
TutkovBudkov |
Creative Director |
| Oleg Barinboim |
TutkovBudkov |
Copywriter |
| Alexey Krupnik |
TWENTY | TWELVE |
Director |
| Eugene Krasnov |
adidas Russia |
Marketing Communications Director |
The Campaign
The agency teamed up with adidas to produce the official farewell message for the pole vault legend, Yelena Isinbaeva, as a part of the global #heretocreate campaign. She would perform her final vault during her last training as a professional athlete and announce her retirement from sport on film. By relating a story of her own personal struggle and overcoming barriers, Yelena would become one of the more vocal speakers for the #heretocreate campaign by adidas.
Creative Execution
The video was produced in two-day period, shortly after Yelena was barred from the Olympics in late July 2016. In the video, she performed the vault in an empty track-and-field arena in her native Volgograd where most of her career’s training had taken place. She followed it up with a statement that this vault was her final act as an athlete but not her ultimate athletic achievement:
"No one can stop me. I’ll just keep reinventing myself"
The video was released on her social pages on August 19, coinciding with the day of Women’s Pole Vault Finals in Rio.
Yelena Isinbaeva also held a press conference in Rio de Janeiro that same day, where she announced the video to an international audience of journalists as her retirement statement.
Since the video was released as a personal statement from Yelena during her press conference in Rio de Janeiro, this branded content promo by Adidas was picked up by every major TV channel in Russia, leading world news publications and the largest TV news network on YouTube, RT.
The exclusive partnership with VK, the #1 social network in Europe, allowed adidas to distribute the promo as a sponsored video for Yelena and a part of the network’s Rio 2016 coverage.
The final vault of Yelena Isinbaeva became the most-talked about #heretocreate event by Adidas Russia. More than 1 billion impressions were accumulated since the video was never intended as a promo — instead, it became a real-life story of conflict and achievement by a legendary athlete.
Yelena Isinbaeva is the top social media blogger of 2016 in Russia according to Yandex, Russia's largest search engine and web analytics company. She has become known as a strong voice for women athletics and has won praise in Russia and beyond by taking action to defend her right be a competing Olympic athlete.
She has been nicknamed 'Russia's sweetheart' on the highest-rated late night show in the country, which would make her an ideal ambassador for a sports brand.
Using her powerful social media accounts — VK, Facebook, and Instagram — with cumulative of >500,000 followers, the announcement of her retirement via social would have proved viral in an instant.