Case: Adidas
Adidas used star players who play with Adidas products in their international soccer campaign in year 2007. Players who use the products of two different product families, Predator and F50, formed two rivalry teams and played exhibition game in July in
International superstars in new teams
World wide Predator vs. F50 soccer campaign by Adidas started with good speed. Campaign presented worlds best football players through their most important tools by spreading them into two superteams. Stars such as David Beckham, Michael Ballack, Kaká and Juan Román Riquelme represented Predator Football Club, when F50 Club de Fútbol was proud to represent Lionel Messi, Arjen Robben, Lukas Podolski and Fred.
The campaign presented two football shoes through their individual playing features. Both teams represent different styles so the soccer world was easy to divide into two teams. The spirit of Predator includes determined team effort and absolute accuracy while F50 team believed more in class, impressiveness and speed. These different personalities were said also in team's motto's, Predator FC with 'Every hero needs a team' and F50 'Every team needs a hero'.
'The beauty of football is based on two teams fight against each other and these awesome teams can be found all over the world of footbal.' 'Through Predator vs. F50 campaign we continued as a spokesman of the concept team by underlining the message of our brand that nothing is impossible.' Campaign brought our way of thinking 'Impossible is nothing' closer to consumers again in an inspiring and activating way, told Erich Stamminger, the member of executive team of Adidas, President and CEO of the Adidas Brand and Executive Board member of the Adidas Group.
Campaign in Finland
The whole Finnish part of the international campaign was executed in IRC-Galleria. Both teams were created with their own communities and all the users of IRC-Galleria who were members of football communities were invited to join these communities with Adidas content inside. Users were able to choose their own team by joining the community which seemed closer to their values and heart. The captain of the Predator team was Aleksei Eremenko Jr and Tunit team was leaded by Mika Väyrynen, both Finnish national team players.
Mika Väyrynen visited the community from
Intersport had their virtual sales representative also within the community through out the whole campaign. He answered a lot of questions about adidas products and was definitely able to bring customers to stores to see the actual products.
'IRC-Galleria worked amazingly well executing this whole campaign. At the first stage we were a little bit worried that are we really able to get the message through only by using one media. Fear proved to be wrong at the very first day of the campaign. Football fans jumped into the campaign and we had quite a lot of work to pick up the winners from thousands of participants. Galtsu showed us to be a true mass media within the Finnish youngsters! Big thanks also to Klikkicom for coordinating the whole project' says Trade Marketing Manager Heidi Kivimaa from adidas.
'IRC-Galleria showed its power perfectly in the Predator vs. Tunit campaign. All the football fans of the community were activated very efficient. Through the communities tailored for adidas we were able to create almost personal relations with the members and the actions were above all very interactive between adidas and the consumers. And most importantly we were able to link the whole thing also to product sales.
The amount of participants in the competitions also tell their own story. Almost 2000 IRC-Galleria users participated in the competitions and taking notice that the main price was to get to play with ones idols, we can state that this was a perfect result for us. As a whole the campaign was truly a success and a good example of the power of social media,' says Juho Koikkalainen, Account Manager of media agency Carat.
