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adidas \I shot the 2009 All Blacks
The challenge:
How does adidas New Zealand, as the principal sponsor of the All Blacks, increase sales of Rugby jerseys and build a 5% year on year sales growth, when you are in the middle of a recession and rugby is struggling in New Zealand.
Solution:
Given that fans covet ‘money can’t buy experiences’ we gave them an offer only adidas could orchestrate – buy the 2009 All Blacks jersey and go in the draw to be one of the 10 people chosen to shoot the All Blacks during their NZ tour, on the field with an official press pass and the use of a $10,000 industry standard camera; plus apparel and tickets for your friends to join you at the game.
To create the poster our live fans were critical. They were already a captivated audience who were excited by the upcoming game and walking through the gates was a perfect time to engage them in a way no one has before. We asked them to shoot the 2009 commemorative poster for us. Any fan that turned up the game in adidas gear received a disposable camera and instructions to take photos of the national anthem from their seat.
All the images taken by the promotion winners and the-fans-in-the-stands were collected together and processed with Microsoft’s ‘Photosynth’ technology. The result was the first ever fully interactive online poster – a veritable virtual stadium – at ishotthe2009allblacks.com. From the seats in the stands, fans could work their way through the stadium of photos, down the rows, onto the field and zoom into the whites of Richie McCaw’s eyes. They could then take a print, and proudly display the 2009 All Blacks poster, they shot, on their wall.
We did this at each of the four home games, allowing every region to have their own individual 2009 commemorative team poster.
Results:
- Not only was the target of 5% growth reached but we generated 19% net sales growth year on year. With 80% of that being directly attributed to an increase in All Blacks Replica jerseys.
- Of the 2500 cameras distributed, over 50% of them were returned to help us create the ‘synths’.
- At the height of the campaign we were responsible for 12% of all traffic to the adidas global website
- During the Auckland test All Blacks and adisynth became the number 2 trending topic on twitter.
- The NZ Herald ran an editorial on the campaign.
- Microsoft thought the idea was so cool they promoted it on their site as a ‘best practice’ case study.