adidas, the world’s second largest sporting goods retailer, recently launched a successful campaign entitled “New School of Thought” “ a back-to-school marketing push that gives users access to free music from electro sensation Ultraviolet Sound and a 30% discount on adidas Originals items. This campaign was rolled out to retail stores nationwide and was highly successful in recruiting new consumers and appealing to current adidas loyalists.

Based on its positive reception, the adidas Retail Marketing team called upon Passenger to launch a “New School of Thought” project within its already established private online community to continue the campaign, and extend it beyond just the back-to-school time-frame. Passenger and adidas recruited enthusiasts of the brand to provide insight and valuable feedback on the campaign itself. Using Passenger’s innovative Customer Collaboration platform and community managers, adidas was able to glean valuable feedback on how to proceed with the campaign.

The Passenger-powered community played a large part in helping adidas decide on three crucial elements of the campaign: font treatment, headline and secondary tag lines. Based on some interactive discussions with their customers, adidas decided to keep the “New School of Thought” headline in all graphics since the community felt it added value of consistency. adidas also had the community vote on their top tag lines to identify which were the most impactful and true to the campaign message. The winners were:

1. “Don’t be afraid to show your true colors”
2. “Color outside the lines once in a while”
3. “Try something you’re not good at, then try it again”
4. “Sameness is a waste of space”
5. “See something you like, take a picture, it’ll last longer”

Due to the high levels of engagement and the invaluable feedback adidas has received from its members, what started as a project event plan, has been further utilized as an ongoing resource to elicit feedback around upcoming promotional activities across the company. One concept tested in the community was “strike a pose while shopping,” which involved people taking photos of themselves at the Originals Store. Based on community input, adidas designed an interactive “strike a pose” table display in each retail store with Polaroid cameras. This idea was even extended further for a virtual “strike a pose” Facebook photo contest where people could submit their favorite pictures to adidas Originals on Facebook. Due to this community generated idea, adidas is currently developing a special section for this as well on its existing adidas Originals Facebook page.

Client: adidas
Agency: Passenger
Budget: Undisclosed
Date of Campaign: February 2008