Title	THE ORIGINALS SESSIONS
Brand	ADIDAS
Product/Service	ADIDAS P.O.D.
Category	B03. Talent: Digital & Social
Entrant	IRIS AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Idea Creation	IRIS AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

Name	Company	Position
Rachna Dhall	Iris Amsterdam	Creative Director
Karen Cardy	Iris Amsterdam	Senior Copy Writer
Gustavo Figueiredo	Iris Amsterdam	Senior Art Director
Jaimie Jennings	Iris Amsterdam	Group Account Director
Rhian Turner	Iris Amsterdam	Account Manager
Lee Burns	Iris Amsterdam	Design Lead
Jessica Reynolds	Iris Amsterdam	Head of Production
Grace Francis	Iris Amsterdam	Producer
Craig Melton	Iris Amsterdam	Producer
Jack Towers	Iris Amsterdam	Designer

Why is this work relevant for Entertainment?

This idea takes the traditional approach to influencer marketing and subverts it. Rather than collaborate on the standard, skippable, polished film content you might expect from a sports brand, we instead gave fans a raw sneak peek into the creative process of their idols. Together with our influencers, we took a calculated risk. We revealed the behind the scenes creativity of the talents as they worked, and released it in episodic content that was not only entertaining and watchable, it was refreshingly raw and unskippable.

Background

Situation - adidas needed to reinvigorate their presence in Foot Locker and in doing so, find a way to place the brand and products in the cultures of their young European audience. An audience turned off by brands, wary of influencer #ads and savvy to bullshit. Brief - To launch the new adidas P.O.D.System sneaker – a shoe made of three technologies from the adidas archive – the Boost heel (2013), the Point of Deflection bridge (1989) and the high rebound EVA forefoot (1995). These parts have been developed over the last 10 years, and today the P.O.D.System brings them together in one original shoe. We were tasked to bring this product story to life under the platform ‘Great along, better together’. Objectives - Drive consideration of this sneaker through online engagement - Create relevance with our teenage, male audience via influencers - Create purchase intent amongst this audience

Describe the creative idea

To share the P.O.D. story and stop teens in their tracks, we created ‘The Originals Session’. Just like the shoe itself, the idea behind each session was to combine three different ‘parts’ to create something truly unique; three different creators in London, and three in Paris. We then challenged them to collaborate on an original film representing their city. In London, we brought together visual artist Mangua, film director Kalvador Peterson and rising music star Yxng Bane. In Paris, we worked with film director Chris Macari, street dancer and cheographer Nelson, and music producer Kyu. We recorded every step of their creative journey through episodic content, showing the meet up, the ideation and the execution. And for it to be a truly authentic creative expression, we had to stand back and let the talent do their thing, not knowing exactly what woud come.

Describe the strategy

The average person scrolls through 93metres of content daily. The average view time is 1.73 seconds. The battle for attention has never been more fierce. Simply using influencers doesn’t guarantee results. We needed to find a way to stop our Gen Z audience in their feed and keep them watching. If we could achieve this, we’d be able to drive them through the CTA and build hype amongst the sneakerhead community. Our creative strategy was simple. Focus our time, money and effort on the behind-the-scenes as this is where authenticity would come in. And, importantly, this is what our audience was seeking out for themselves on Instagram – from behind the scenes at Football clubs to the collab process between hip-hop artists. Nothing complex, just simple, episodic storytelling that leveraged the Instagram Stories platform to create hype, allowing for engagement/action through a microsite and culminating in a live in-store event.

Describe the execution

With three unique talents working together for the first time, we captured raw and authentic behind the scenes episodic content, giving our young sneaker-head audience a rare glimpse into the creative process of their idols. The episodes were shared via Foot Locker and influencer channels, with the final creation by the influencers, premiering at an exclusive Foot Locker event in each city. Consumers viewing content on Instagram could swipe through to the microsite, where an interactive experience allowed them to claim a ticket to their city’s exclusive Foot Locker event. Other influencers were invited to follow the content and attend the event through a seeding box, which tells the story of the shoe and provides them with their own pair of P.O.D.System sneakers.

Describe the outcome

Across the entirety of the campaign over 2.4 million people were reached. Over 30% of viewers watched our Instagram stories to the end (average adidas completion rate sits at 25%). The best dwell times were seen in London on the 3rd episode, with 33% watching content right to the end, and in Paris on the 4th episode where a massive 53% of viewers watched to the end. 7% of consumers took the time to actively engage with the content. And overall, the episodes drove a massive 12K direct clicks to purchase. Ultimately, we were able to put P.O.D. on the map. The sneakerhead community were engaging, watching and buying. We attained valuable PR from the likes of VICE. And we landed, with originality, ‘Great alone, better together’.