A sustainability campaign that’s also very comfortable, from adidas | Parley (creative strategy)
The brief: Create awareness for the adidas + Parley Ultraboost sneaker.
The problem: Category fatigue affects adidas particularly hard, because of their rival with the other huge global sports brand. Combine that with a cluttered industry where real innovation can often seem buried to those not in tune with the sneaker culture.
The strategy: Our audience is big on sustainability and helping the environment, so our clear way in was to lift up adidas as a retail leader in a major problem affecting everyone - plastic pollution. Our goal was to treat them almost like a tech company, putting a new polish on their reputation as leaders in reusable technology for their products.
The execution: We capitalized on a modest client budget by maximizing bang for the buck. We created a highly informational post to inform our users about plastic pollution, and shared simple ways our audience could do their part. Then we pivoted to a hype post about what adidas is doing with Parley and their innovative work at spinning plastic into shoe threads. Finally, a layer of display media brought everything together across the site.
The result: As this was the third adidas + Parley Ultraboost sneaker, clients were looking for newer ways to raise its awareness. And the partnership with BuzzFeed paid off, even being limited to site-level post content. Our articles drove increased referrals to the site page and sparked healthy commentary about plastic pollution.
