GLITCH is both a brand new football boot concept AND a brand new route to market for adidas.

The product itself is completely different, featuring an inner shoe for perfect fit and a laceless outer skin that offers perfect ball control, but is also interchangeable allowing players to express their own style.

This new football boot is ONLY available for purchase through a dedicated mobile app, which was designed and built to make GLITCH a must-have for the new football stars - urban street players whose freestyle play is as dependent on the style as it is the score.

This mobile platform opens to purchase through special one-use referral codes. You literally cannot get your hands on these boots unless you are invited by another GLITCH player, adding exclusivity and creating a community around the product – a community fed and managed by influencers, not marketers.

We intentionally started small, with a core group of influencers and urban footballers in London. This allowed the community to grow gradually and organically. By making it exclusive and limited in number, the customer experience could be more personal.

Players could book an appointment to try the boots on the pitch, joined by influencers and fitting advisors. We fed our audience’s desire for instant gratification by making the process of purchasing the boots quick and seamless. The mobile app allowed boots to be bought on the move and delivered within 4 hours, anywhere in London. There was 24 hour chat support from the same influencers who helped build the community.

The app brings the adidas GLITCH ethos to life with a unique and responsive visual experience that is imperfect and edgy. Designed for the snapchat generation, it’s controlled by swiping and discovery rather than being a guided experience.

GLITCH trended immediately and boots were selling fast without being advertised anywhere. Players took to social media begging for referral codes from their contacts. We made it into the ‘HOT this week’ list in the Apple app store in our first week. We even saw access codes being sold on eBay.

Despite the controlled release, the GLITCH app has had over 60 thousand downloads in the first six months. The codes seeded by our first influencers had a 75% conversion rate to a boot sale and we’ve continued to see an 89% redemption rate on codes being activated.

All without a scrap of media spend, zero advertising or sponsorship & no celebrity endorsement.

GLITCH transformed one of football's most recognisable brands into one of its hottest start-ups. It turned the industry upside down and created a completely new relationship between a brand and consumer.

We avoided classic channels and decided to focus on Mobile and influencer led Social activity. Our audience was heavily into digital and social media and big on mobile usage, so we didn’t focus our efforts on the traditional media channels typical of a football boot launch. Instead we involved our audience right from the beginning and based our strategy around them. Utilising the power of the influencer to generate interest with relevant social media and user generated branded content which matters to them.

Football is changing – the new players are growing up playing in small squads and urban academies. Their idols aren’t premiership players, but freestylers: players that can literally do the impossible and get respect for their style of play as well as their ability to win.

We found this audience isn’t watching TV, following Drogba or reading the magazines. They’re online on their phone, watching YouTube, learning tricks, sharing their skills and finding opportunities to join a squad. They can’t be won over by the usual marketing mix.

We launched without any media spend or ads, no big star player and no shops or online stores. Putting the influencer insight and our mobile technology at the heart of the strategy, hosting unique and highly relevant content, created for them, by peers, influencers and home-grown football talent in their city. We played to the audience, not the accepted norms.

Start-up culture is ripe with experimentation and originality. Risk breeds creativity and these are the companies driving change in our industry.

But… If you’re a successful, well established company delivering year-on-year growth as the no.1 Football brand in Europe, how do you break with tradition and reap the benefits of change? How do you behave like a start up?

You have to break all your own rules, build a team with autonomy and give them all the confidence to experiment.

This is the story of GLITCH – a game changer that broke the pattern for Adidas, uncovering real insights into an audience that are difficult to reach and leveraging that to drive a totally different strategy.