House Party

Adidas celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2009, and the band wanted to celebrate its heritage with a partner that could match their brand values and help communicate its key messages. The challenge Adidas faced was how to capitalise on the its heritage, while at the same time appealing to a broad spectrum of European youth.

If it wanted to become part of popular culture, and achieve social currency with young consumers, Adidas needed to reposition itself as more mainstream youth lifestyle brand, and shed some of its retro-sports image. MTV was selected as the perfect partner to help breakthrough to this market, using the brand line “Celebrate originality” to promote Adidas Originals.
MTV and Adidas pooled their consumer insight and realized that young people today have huge extended networks of friends. One of the key motivating factors for their target audience was the thrill of potentially winning a money-can’t-buy experience, and these two insights resulted in the Adidas/MTV House Party competition.

Consumers were given the chance to win a house party in their home town, for themselves and 60 of their friends. MTV promoted the competition in pre-roll videos online, and with competition spots directing people to the Facebook app through which people could enter the contest.

The campaign generated huge word-of-mouth buzz among the MTV community and beyond, as news of the competition went viral. The winner and their 60 friends were immersed into the Adidas Originals world, as each room of the party house was totally rebranded to reflect the brand advertising campaign. The party came complete with cool guests, and DJ talent including Dynamo, Norman Jay and the Filthy Dukes. MTV proactively ensured party content was shared across Facebook.

After the campaign the audience were significantly more likely to agree that Adidas Originals is not just a sports brand but also a lifestyle (+115%) and fashion (+94%) brand. The viral push generated 600,000 views and over 50,000 clicks to the Adidas Originals site. A search campaign generated the majority of clicks to the Facebook competition site with 67,000 clicks 1,555 people entered the competition from over 12 markets across Europe. The MTV post campaign analysis showed that youth in Europe were now 42% more likely to recommend the brand. The campaign also delivered a double digit (13%) growth in sales.