James Harden the player and James Harden the personality were central to our thinking. On the court, he is regarded as everything from “basketball’s Picasso” and MVP candidate to a bad sportsman, or at worst, a cheat. Off the court, his flamboyant style, guarded demeanor and signature beard sets him apart from his peers.

We arrived at Project Harden: an unpredictable Instagram ride though Harden’s world that invited fans to collaborate and rewarded them for doing so. Choosing a predominantly visual platform to hype a shoe we couldn’t show epitomized Harden’s enigmatic nature.

We kept the disruption alive throughout the three-month campaign as we hacked Instagram’s native functionality to give our followers a unique experience each week. Embedded clues and exclusive news encouraged fans to dig, engage and discover, gaining everything from abstract glimpses of the shoe to direct interaction with Harden when he jumped in as our community manager.

With our sights focused on pushing the limits of a single, visually-rich platform, we exploded the story of Harden’s first signature shoe in 12 chapters hooked to his game and lifestyle.

Tactics included:

-- Letting fans be the first people to review Harden Vol. 1--but obscuring the shoe, using their voices to describe the design.

-- Having Harden join the conversation, responding to fans’ comments and questions from his personal account.

-- Inviting our community to respond to statements about Harden with different emojis to share their point of view.

-- Asking followers to turn themselves into Harden using Instagram Stories to win prizes.

-- A mass “fan follow-back” on Harden’s birthday, the first time the account followed anyone.

-- Obscuring secret messages in images that could only be read by taking a screenshot and applying an Instagram filter.

-- Hiding exclusive soundbites from an interview with Harden behind a wall of seemingly blank posts.

The overwhelming result is that when Harden Vol. 1 dropped in October 2016, it became the fastest-selling adidas basketball shoe of all time, with the “Imma Be a Star” colorway selling out in under five hours, and “13 Below Zero” selling out in less than 24 hours.

This was due to our strategy of creating a community of not just followers but highly-engaged superfans: 20% of fans engaged with every single post during the campaign. They collectively watched 107 minutes of content per day over 12 weeks.

This engagement helped us to grow the community organically to more than 40,000 with minimal media spend. The community continues to grow organically at a rate of almost 1,000 new followers per week.

Strong shoe sales were part of the brand’s resurgence, contributing to adidas doubling its share of the U.S. athletic footwear market to 10% by January 2017.