Foot Locker wanted to drive their mostly male, heavily into social media target into the store every day for daily new shoe releases.

We aired a commercial featuring NBA all star James Harden trading his entourage member, Maurice, to the undesirable entourage of NBA star (and pop culture flop) Kris Humphries for wearing the same shoes twice. To keep consumers involved for the month, Maurice took to the web. Our character Maurice (@HelpMaurice) was accepted and rejected from dozens of other famous NBA players’ entourages, all using content distributed through the NBA players’ real social media accounts. Our target was able to see the entire story enfold in his normal Twitter space, because he already follows all these athletes. To create more exposure, Maurice gave interviews on NBA TV (before actual NBA games) and Foot Locker hosted local events where James Harden and Maurice tried to publicly sort out their differences.

Our character Maurice was exposed to 15mm followers on Twitter alone. His story and its connection to Foot Locker’s shoe releases was picked up by our consumer’s most relevant news sources including NBA TV, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, USA Today, CBS News, E! network, The Daily Mail (UK), New York Post, US Weekly Magazine, PerezHilton.com, Bleacher Report, Nice Kicks, Sole Collector, Sneaker News, Dime Magazine, SLAM magazine, Sneaker Hype, Complex Magazine and literally hundreds and hundreds of blogs. More importantly, sneakers flew off the shelves and sales exceeded all client forecasts.

By utilizing Foot Locker’s relationship with some of the best NBA players on Twitter, we demonstrated a new and practically cost-free way to tell a retail story online. Our character Maurice was accepted and rejected in the entourages of over a dozen professional NBA players. Just by following their favorite NBA players (which they all do), our target saw an entire story unfold in their normal Twitter space. Foot Locker has fans all over the Web, so we pushed content through YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

After investing the majority of our budget on the production of the TV spot, we were able to extend the campaign online with a shoot budget of just $64k and without a single dollar spent on media. Our character Maurice was exposed to 15M followers on Twitter alone. His story and its connection to Foot Locker’s shoe releases was picked up by our consumer’s most relevant news sources including NBA TV, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, USA Today, CBS News, E! network, The Daily Mail (UK), The New York Post, US Weekly Magazine, PerezHilton.com, and others.