Title	OLYMPIC-SIZED FLAT LAYS BY ADIDAS
Brand	ADIDAS
Product/Service	TEAM GB KIT FOR RIO OLYMPIC GAMES 2016
Category	B13. Content Led Engagement & Marketing
Entrant	HILL+KNOWLTON STRATEGIES London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	HILL+KNOWLTON STRATEGIES London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement	HILL+KNOWLTON STRATEGIES London, UNITED KINGDOM
PR	HILL+KNOWLTON STRATEGIES London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Claire Holden	Hill+Knowlton Strategies	Managing Director
Laura Byrne	Hill+Knowlton Strategies	Account Director
Josh Connell	Hill+Knowlton Strategies	Head of Content + Publishing, Sports
Matt Hall / Consultant / Project Lead	Hill+Knowlton Strategies	Consultant
Kayleigh Williams	Hill+Knowlton Strategies	Senior Account Executive
Lidya Gumus	Hill+Knowlton Strategies	Junior Account Executive

The Campaign

The popular trend of a #flatlay on social media is frequently used by our target audience. It’s usually a very two-dimensional format, but we saw the opportunity to take it to the next level, creating a third dimension using the athletes themselves. We could then also curate and annotate these photos for media, seamlessly and creatively connecting a new and fresh take on a classic social format. Our research also suggested that if we allowed athletes to build on an existing social behaviour under our art direction, they’d be able to infuse the shots with their own personalities and would therefore be more likely to post it on their own channels, driving further earned attention.

Execution

We worked with suppliers to build the technology that would allow us to shoot vertically,, in premium quality, but that also allowed the athletes to quickly and easily share the photos on their channels. We set up special shoots for key athletes including Jessica Ennis-Hill, Laura Trott and Tom Daley, creating picture stories and bespoke annotated versions of the shots that could be sold in to media. As other individual athletes and teams came through we sent targeted media pitches to national media and curated two ‘best of’ albums, as well as posting key visuals to adidas’ channels.

The activity was a huge success, by the end of the three weeks, the athletes couldn’t wait to get to the adidas booth when they arrived on site, having already admired their teammates’ posts. Over 150 of the athletes came to our booth, posting content using our hashtag to a total of over 8.5 million followers, producing over 400,000 fan engagements with their content. The total media reach of the campaign was nearly 400 million. National and regional media featured our brand imagery daily in the run up to the Games, each time as picture story spreads and news features, with the adidas kit front and centre. The proof of the campaign’s success? The Team GB swimming trunks completely sold out just four days into the Olympic Games and 93% of the kit sold out as well.

The Situation

As official kit provider for Team GB at the Rio Olympics, adidas and Stella McCartney were challenged with making the nation care about high-tech performance sportswear specially designed for athletes and their individual disciplines. A new take on a popular social media trend, we set up a photo studio for the athletes to literally ‘lay down’ with their kit, ensuring the adidas products were heroes every time. The campaign achieved 686 million impressions through social engagement and national media coverage. The images were included in news pieces instead of being relegated to the back with the usual product listings.

The Strategy

Knowing that the flat lay format is popular with young fans, our key demographic, we took this trend and added a huge injection of creativity and Olympic-sized personality. We avoided the usually clichéd and overly dramatic athlete photoshoots, instead encouraging the athletes to take up their own pose alongside their kit. The aim was to create an image that would appeal to both traditional and social media, all the while having the kit as the star of the show. With athletes in the frame in a fun and relaxed way we knew this would help get the images noticed.