adidas became the first brand to integrate music with the local running events.

More than 300 people had tuned into “Run Together, Listen Together” community for each running session via digital. This was a more than 10 times amplification of original scale, with only similar investment as before. In the end, over 1,200 unique participants had joined the events in just one month.

Most importantly, this newly adapted technology allows adidas to breakthrough the geographical limitation of organising local running events and further recruit a group of loyalty runners in the digital platform.

It is common to see people running and listening to music at the same time as this is the only entertainment they have during running.

We leveraged on music, which is an untapped audio platform, to connect runners in different places via their mobile devices.

To create a never-discovered engagement via music, adidas partnered with KKBOX, the biggest online music provider in Hong Kong, to launch a ‘Run Together, Listen Together’ event. ‘Listen Together’ is a radio-like feature from KKBOX in which users can listen to songs recommended by celebrities simultaneously. We strategically blended it into the adidas Urban Run events, with selected running songlists being played in each running session.

Once runners login to adidas running channels via their mobile devices, they could enjoy the same music together whether they were at the event or were running elsewhere.

Running is the most popular sports proven by people’s active participation in marathon events. Unlike other sports, it has always been an individual activity. People tend to explore, enjoy and participate on their own. Under the hectic and stressful life, runners can hardly have fixed running schedules. They run only when they are allowed to. Therefore, it is difficult for advertising to tap into running moments.

Running is always the hottest battlefield for sports brands. Different communication messages fill up every channel with countless communication angles cluttering the market. Moreover, numerous branded running events are initiated to summon runners to associate with the brand, which proves to be one of the effective ways to engage runners. However, these events can only reach a limited amount of participants (30-40 only), as Hong Kong people are busy.

adidas needs to identify an innovative way to further expand the population of the participants.