THE INTERNET OF TREADMILLS

We built the World’s first treadmill vending machine – which uses energy as a currency and rewards runners on their calories burned. The vending machines were placed in shopping malls where the UAE public spend most of their leisure time.

To use the vending machine, runners simply had to run on the treadmill and a reward was dispensed to the runner based on his/her performance. The higher the calories burned, the bigger the reward. If the results were excellent, the machine could even vend you the Boost shoes.

In 2 weeks, we had 926 runners participating in the experience –surpassing our initial expectation of around 600 runners by about 54%. 4 weeks into the campaign, Boost shoes were sold out across UAE, achieving a sell through rate of 100%. Prior to the launch running shoes constituted only 5% of total Adidas. Thanks to Boost, this share more than doubled to 11% at the campaign’s end. The campaign generated huge buzz on social media, blogs, and health and fitness portals, which translated into an earned media value of $565,000 - more than 3 times the cost of the campaign.