Giving new adidas shoes a digital boost

2020 brought us all bad energy. In order to celebrate positive changes in our audience’s lives, we helped adidas launch its new ULTRABOOST 21 running shoes with an inspiring digital activation aimed at helping people break up with the bad energy holding them back.

The words “breakup” and “engagement” don’t usually go together — but this breakup was unlike any other. 

Thinking globally, we started locally

adidas has always believed in the power to transform people’s lives through sports, and its new flagship ULTRABOOST 21 running shoes are a perfect example of how. By educating people about the sneaker’s cutting-edge technology, we motivated our audiences to get up and running again. 

Since we couldn't create a physical experience for the running community, we presented adidas’ new shoes in a completely digital way. We brought the global campaign down to the local level, producing:

• Localized materials in-line with the global campaign.

• A localized website in collaboration with the Museum of Broken Relationships.

• Promotional photo and video content.

Rewarding the best breakups with prizes

The activation consisted of three parts:

1. A website and prize contest in which we asked users to share their stories about what kinds of bad energy they decided to break up with. At the end of the campaign, the best break-ups were awarded and displayed in the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb.

2. Adidas in-store promotions, where sneaker buyers got prizes and were invited to join the campaign. Zagreb store visitors got tickets to the museum, while visitors in other cities got free portable chargers.

3. A combination of paid ads, press releases, and local influencer channels, including the local adidas Runners running community, spread our key message in the digital sphere. 

Here’s to the breakups worth remembering

The campaign garnered a total of 37 PR articles in the media and 35 posts on influencer channels. And apart from entering the finals of the 2021 MIXX awards, one month of "breakups" garnered results worthy of remembering (and quite fondly at that):

• The website garnered over 1,200 submissions.

• PR posts achieved a potential reach of 17 million readers.

• Instagram posts reached over 372 thousand users.

• Posts received over 43 thousand likes.