Title	THE ORIGINALS SESSIONS
Brand	ADIDAS
Product/Service	ADIDAS P.O.D.
Category	E05. Influencer / Talent
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

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 #ads, wary of influencers, 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 Point of Deflection bridge (1989), the high rebound EVA forefoot (1995), and the Boost heel (2013). These parts have been developed over the last 30 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 alone, 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 strategy

The average person scrolls through 93 metres of content per day and the average view time of content is 1.73 seconds. The battle for attention is fierce and simply using influencers doesn’t guarantee results. We needed to stop our Gen Z audience and keep them watching. If we could achieve this, we’d be able to drive 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 from. 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 premiere of the final creations.

Describe the execution

With three talents working together for the first time, we captured raw, authentic behind-the-scenes episodic content, giving our young sneaker-head audience a glimpse into the creative process of their idols. Consumers viewing content on Instagram could swipe to the microsite, where an interactive experience let them claim a ticket to their city’s exclusive Foot Locker event. The episodes were released over two months. The content was released in the run up to the shoe launches in both cities. The episodes were shared via Foot Locker Europe and our talent’s own channels. The final creation by the influencers premiered at exclusive Foot Locker events in both London and Paris. Content was geo-targeted to target consumers living in London and Paris. Other influencers in each city were invited to follow content and attend the event through a seeding box, revealing the story of the shoe and a pair of P.O.D.System sneakers.

List the results

Across the 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. Overall, the episodes drove 12K direct clicks to purchase. Together with our influencers, we took a calculated risk. We revealed the behind the scenes creativity of the talents, and released it in episodic content that was not only entertaining and watchable, it was refreshingly raw and honest. The sneakerhead community were engaged, watching and buying. We attained valuable PR from the likes of VICE. And we landed, with originality, ‘Great alone, better together’.