- The Work
- \
- About Us
- \
- Agencies
- \
- Philosophies
- \
- Contact Us
- \
- Blog + News
ADIDAS \LITTLE YELLOW DUCK.
The adidas Auckland Marathon sees 11,000 runners determined to beat their impossible every year. Our long running strategy is that you only need two things to run: motivation and adidas running gear. Previous, we built adirun.co.nz to provide runners with all the advice they might need. Following from that, we even blasted runners with 50 knots of motivation using a hurricane fan.
To motivate runners, we’re using military psychology, and a little yellow rubber duck. The military thinking goes like this: in times of extreme stress or pain, think of yourself as a rubber duck. You cannot be crushed, you cannot be broken. You will rise to the surface. You will always bounce back. Adshells and gymlites delivered our duck manifesto. It was reinforced at point of sale.
Then the campaign built with magazine ads, outdoor, ambient, flyers, T-shirts, online, stencils and stickers on popular running routes. And to top it all off, the random appearance of a 4.5m inflatable yellow duck, plus 15,000 adidas branded little yellow rubber ducks. At the pre-marathon running expo, runners were able to interact with the giant duck by signing their reasons to run or their ‘impossible time’ onto it. Every runner also received a rubber duck in their pre-marathon adidas motivational pack.
Once the campaign hit the streets, the adidas Auckland marathon sold out in record time – 8 weeks ahead of schedule. adidas has received numerous requests from the public for copies of the creative. And the duck concept was picked up by websites and blogs overseas. The duck also made an appearance on page 2 of New Zealand’s biggest circulating newspaper. Remember, flesh, bones and muscles can hurt. Rubber can’t.