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ADIDAS: BRAND CAMPAIGN
We turned ad space into precious space for sport
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Let's start with the problem
Brand campaigns are a dime a dozen - especially in the sportswear category - where manufacturers like Nike, Adidas and Under Armor have learned that big, bold and disruptive brand campaigns capture attention and tap into the cultural zeitgeist.
They eschew main stream product-first campaigns for emotive brand campaigns designed to empower the wearer. For this brand campaign, Adidas wanted to edge it's way into the ESG space. They had identified that space for sport in urban environments was dwindling at an alarming rate.
They wanted us to conceptualise a low-cost-high-impact brand campaign that would let them appear to be the guardians of urban sport spaces.
Our Strategic Solution
This is the space to introduce the business and what it has to offer. Define the qualities and values that make it unique.
01. Competitor research
Our first step was to review product positioning, tone and visual language of key competitors, to understand the language of the category, and carve out whitespace to help land our new positioning.
02. Stakeholder Interviews
Interviewing team members across multiple roles including founders,, customers and riders giving us a holistic view of customer needs and requirements, company culture and ways of working.
03. Behavioural Workshops
Using our proprietary workshops, we identified behaviours, values and tone of voice prompts that best reflected our new positioning and culture of Wahu!
04. Brand Development
Finally, we brought all our thinking together to develop a brand narrative, messaging pillars, values and behavioural guidelines to inform the visual brand, web development and go-to-market strategy.
Problem solved: the big idea
Because brand campaigns in this space are so common, we knew we'd have to conceptualise something a little 'out there'. It wasn't enough to use the usual media channels to should about the necessity of urban sport spaces.
We thought long and hard about what space in urban environments is plentiful - the answer was advertising space.
So we repurposed advertising billboards into interactive spaces for sport.
AD SPACE -> SPACE FOR SPORT
Phase 1 - Ad space
to sport space
The first logical step was to do this literally - by buying up advertising space and crafting 'special builds' with our media partners to repurpose the advertising into legitimate spaces for urban sport.
Phase 2 - Geo-located ads point to local sport spaces
We followed this up with a series of OOH ads that promoted the importance of space for sport using personal stories of remarkable individuals who benefited from the space. These were based on real spaces around major European cities and were geographically rolled out close to the spaces themselves.
Phase 3 - Micro stories told across social
When it came to social, the content focused on deep-dives into the personal stories featured in the OOH. This way,we would be able to explain the importance of spaces for sport, without seeming self-serving in promoting what we’re doing to safeguard these spaces.
