adidas, a main sponsor of World Cup 2014, aimed to leverage the tournament to cement its leadership position in football category and broaden the gap with Nike.

Different time zones with Brazil restricted people’s chance to watch the live matches. Our extensive consumer research revealed that no matter how difficult the football fans to engage with the live matches, nothing prevented them from following their connected passion… the news of their favorite football players.

We then suggested adidas leverage their exclusive player and national team sponsorships to heighten the audience’s interest of World Cup 2014 in Hong Kong.

From brand tracking report, adidas

• cemented the leadership position (broadening the gap with Nike from 19% to 50%)

• maintained top-of-mind brand recall (awareness level 50% higher than Nike)

• achieved high sales results (22% growth for World Cup related products)

• effectively engaged football lovers (‘Impact of advertising among football lovers’ scoring 96%)

$1million worth of earned media coverage was generated, which mainly focusing on the changing rooms train cabin concept. More than 200,000 posts and check-in’s were recorded in social media.

The adidas trains have won numerous local awards and were named the favourite OOH in HK.

Each cabin showcased one particular national team where passengers could choose their favorite to board. The gangway in between the cabins were transformed into player’s lockers with team’s jerseys on display. The train’s seats were labelled with players’ name and number which allowed HK people to be ‘closer’ to their favourite players’ inside the adidas trains.

To amplify the engagement with audience, one special cabin was released 3-weeks prior to WC2014 launch, it immediately became the most discussed topic in Social. The cabin featured a Captain Tsubasa team, an all-time favourite for our key target audience of the post-80’s generation.

To maintain the leadership position in the clutter outdoor environment with fierce battle from various brands, simple format of outdoor execution restrict the engagement with people.

By redefining the use of media, we helped to break through these limitations, strengthen adidas’ “all in or nothing” positioning to football lovers and the general public.

To get people “all in”, underground train was strategically employed as it’s commonly seen people watching highlight of the matches they missed when they are travelling. By transforming the interior of trains into the national teams’ changing room, we then created a WC2014 environment to excite them.