The New Zealand All Blacks are consistently one of the world’s best rugby teams. As principal sponsor, adidas runs a campaign every year to sell the iconic black jersey and get NZ fans, existing and new, closer to the team. Every year a team poster is created which comes free with every jersey sold. With this year’s promotion, buying the jersey allowed fans to have the poster with the added incentive of becoming actual team photographers, bringing them closer than they had ever been.

The chance to become an official All Blacks photographer was promoted nationally at point of sale, on web banners, via eDM to 200,000 fans, in-stadium films, and an instructional video on adidas.com & YouTube featuring megastar Jonah Lomu. All messaging drove traffic to our microsite www.iSHOTthe2009allblacks.com where the whole story unfolded: simply purchase a jersey and be in to win.

The winners, armed with industry standard cameras, would be able to shoot the team during the national anthem at the beginning of each test match. Then, even if you didn’t win, you did - if you wore a jersey to the game. Hundreds of other proud, jersey-wearing fans also received free cameras at the home test matches in order to photograph the team. These were collected and uploaded to make a unique, fully navigable online poster at www.ishotthe2009allblacks.com. A traditional 2D poster was available free to download.

By giving fans an opportunity to be active in making the poster, as well as contributing to a virtual, online experience on an official All Blacks site, fans now felt a part of the national team. The promo incentive was a unique way to get fans literally closer, which resulted in an enlarged database, was one of the most viewed pages on adidas.com during the promotion and adidas achieved a 19.5% increase in year on year net sales – 80% of which was directly attributed to sales of All Blacks jerseys.