adidas House Party

In late November adidas Originals launched a marketing campaign called “House Party,” designed to garner attention for the 60th anniversary of the brand. While the campaign includes live events, real house parties, commercials, and other media buys, House Party has enjoyed its largest successes in the digital sphere, where the campaign attracts viewers on YouTube, Facebook, and on the adidas corporate Web site.


In the House Party video—the focal point of the campaign—celebrities (Young Jeezy, David Beckham, Kevin Garnett, The Ting Tings, and others), as well as hundreds of good-looking young people, congregate at an urban house party where they skateboard inside, paint on the walls, and dive fully-clothed into a backyard pool—all-the-while conspicuously sporting the three stripes and adidas Originals logo.

Response to the campaign has been overwhelmingly positive. The YouTube video has 830,000 views to date, the adidas Originals Web site continues to hawk online spin-offs of the campaign (like The Ting Tings paint party), and the adidas Originals Facebook page (with more than 1.5 million fans) threw a house party for a lucky fan.

The important question to consider, though, is whether adidas loyalists have found the campaign authentic enough. While Adrants.com called House Party “an ego-fueled, self-indulgent, hipsteresque, celebu-fest,” most blogs have been on fire with praise for the campaign, and one TV station even created a knockoff of the ad to promote The Simpsons. It’s clear from a look at the online chatter over the campaign, that the vast majority of online creators, critics, and collectors agree with themusingsofondolady.blogspot.com that House Party’s use of skateboarders, hip hop, motorbikes, and graffiti all contribute to the authenticity of the campaign.

While the most successful attribute of the campaign is authenticity to the brand and to brand loyalists, the campaign didn’t take full advantage of the Web’s most fascinating feature: user-generated content. House Party is hugely successful in a Web 1.0 world, where adidas has pushed excellent content on the consumer. On the adidas Originals Web site, viewers can even get more in-depth in the house party by choosing a room they’d like to see more of—the living room, for example—and can witness more footage of people drinking, dancing, playing poker, and painting on the living room walls.

However, nothing put forward by the campaign allows users to interact on a more personal level, or create their own content. Wouldn’t it be a more successful campaign if users were uploading their own house party videos, using social network to create a virtual house party, or pulling content onto their own sites?

Moving forward, adidas might consider revising their campaign to make full use of the following online tools:

1. Twitter. Adidas Originals has 108 followers of their Twitter profile. So few because there are zero Tweets coming from adidas Originals. Adidas could quickly start a conversation (and, more importantly, be a part of a conversation) by updating their fans and asking questions of the roughly 8 million people who use Twitter. It’s a small number, relative to Facebook, but Twitter caters to early adopters, young people, and those who like to be on the cutting edge: just the demographics adidas Originals would like to target.

2. Content sharing on the corporate Web site. Adidas should encourage their fans to use House Party to create something original of their own. To do this, adidas could allow fans to download:

• Art assets including concept art & hi-res logos
• Site design elements including borders, backgrounds, fonts, and stylesheets
• Exclusive content: Forum avatars / Messenger images

3. Ning. Why not create an online House Party? Ning allows users to create their own social networking site, which would be the perfect tool for adidas to create an invite-only virtual gathering, where invitees could invite friends, who could invite friends, who could invite friends… just like a real house party.

Interested in learning more about sports business? You might be interested in The Business of Sports, Second Edition.

Olympics Facebook Application

I'm happy to announce that the Facebook application I created (with George Mandis of Snaptortoise) is now up-and-running.

Olympic Games 2008 is a fun way to track medal standings by country, rank, or event. And though we don't have high usage numbers yet, this project has taught me a lot about the opportunities and challenges surrounding the promotion of a Facebook application. I've put links on content-sharing sites like Digg and Reddit, posted on group forums like Yahoo groups and Tribe, and mentioned it on StumbleUpon. So far, my best luck has come directly from Facebook, where friends and friends-of-friends have helped our little sports app take off.

The best part of this experiment has been what I've learned about running a project that unfolds in real time. If Uzbekistan gets a medal and we don't have a flag ready for that country, or there's a tie for bronze, we need to adapt quickly or lose viewers.

The hardest part of this project has been entering in stats for each event. Was there a way to automate this? Next time I'm looking for an open source data feed.

Nike Marketing Campaigns

Nike has had some very forgettable marketing campaigns. In a year or two, who will remember the “Free” campaign in which Nike urges athletes to train like they were wearing no shoes? Or the “Second Coming: Our Game. Our Time.” campaign that celebrates the 25th anniversary of Nike Air Force 1? Though they might be successful, they won’t last in the public imagination in the way that some of Nike’s most beloved branding accomplishments have.

But unlike these comparative flops, I think it’s fair to say that Nike, more than any other brand, has created marketing campaigns that have emblazoned themselves into our memories, and have changed the way we look at sports and maybe even ourselves.

Too corny? I challenge anyone to find marketing efforts from any industry that have made as much of an impression as the JUST DO IT and LIVESTRONG campaigns.

The slogan “Just Do It” combines grit and determination with a touch of humor. It’s a rallying cry to get off the couch. It’s self-empowering. And, according to the book, Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh, the slogan shows that no matter who you are, no matter what your physical, economic or social limitations, “transcendence is not just possible: it’s waiting to be called forth.”

Lance Armstrong’s “Livestrong” movement, run in association with Nike, is similarly empowering. For a dollar, people wanting to support the fight against cancer could purchase a yellow “baller band.” By 2005, a year after the loopy wristbands were released, they had sold 42 million, making it one of the most successful cause-related marketing campaigns ever. According to the book, Why We Talk: The Truth Behind Word-of-Mouth, Nike succeeded with this campaign by focusing on customers’ higher-level needs. The “Livestrong” bracelet helped a tribe of loyalists identify themselves and with each other.

These are just two out of many Nike marketing endeavors. Below I’ve assembled a partial list of the others (most done by the Weiden + Kennedy ad agency) along with the year the campaign began.

Air Jordan – 1985
Revolution – 1987
Just Do It – 1988
Bo Knows –1989
Instant Karma – 1992
I Am Not a Role Model – 1993
Let Me Play – 1995
Whatever – 2000
Secret Tournament – 2002
Livestrong – 2004
Free – 2005
Joga Bonito ("play beautiful") – 2006
Second Coming: Our Game. Our Time. – 2007
Quick is Deadly – 2007
Become Legendary – 2008