Adidas is doing something pretty cool this NBA All Star Weekend (Valentine’s Day weekend), and it involves an unique strategy for implementing viral features into their campaign for its footwear and apparel lines. It also involves our very own Dwight Howard, star player for the NBA’s Orlando Magic.
Adidas will be airing a 30-second commercial that will urge viewers to visit the Adidas website and YouTube channel. On the YouTube channel will be a video of Dwight Howard. There’s nothing unique about that; plenty of commercials have tried to drive traffic to their website and/or videos on YouTube. So what’s the big deal?
One of the videos featuring Dwight Howard reveals more content of the player the more times the video is shared. Adidas is actually giving the consumer an incentive for sharing the video with their friends. If you want to see more content of Dwight Howard, then you can help make it happen by sharing the video you just saw.
Another video featuring the Magic player shows him jumping as high or low as consumers choose using a gaming-style grid control. Dwight Howard is known for his jumping ability (he was the NBA’s Dunk Contest champion 2 years ago, and he got robbed the year before and after that).
It is believed that this is the first time a marketer has tied accessibility of content to the amount of hits a video draws on YouTube. Will it be the last time?
I don’t think so. I can already think of a number of other brands that could have incorporated this kind of strategy in the past. Several years ago, Will Ferrell performed a number of commercials for Old Spice as a character from his movie Semi-Pro. The commercials were mostly improvised, which means there were probably a lot of outtakes. If Old Spice were to mimic Adidas in this situation, they could take the best 3-5 outtakes and make them unlock-able based on the amount of views the first video receives. The way people love Will Ferrell, I’m willing to bet all the outtakes would have been unlocked, too.
Snickers ran a campaign with Mr. T a few years back that could have tried the Adidas approach. Mr. T doesn’t improvise his lines (to the best of my knowledge at least), but much like Will Ferrell, he is well-liked enough for people to want to unlock more videos of the almighty mohawked one. Mr. T is already a YouTube star as it is:
Video games and movies can set up a system like Adidas’ to gradually release more extensive previews based on the amount of public interest. This could also be a way to predict how successful a movie or game will be and how much money to put towards marketing for it.
Keep an eye out for the commercial if you happen to follow the NBA this weekend, and we’ll continue to keep our finger on the pulse of exciting new strategies. Also, GO MAGIC!
————————————————————————————————————————- The Dream Factory Blog is managed by Matt Ruecker. To ask Matt any questions about what you’ve read here, please send him an email at media@dreamfactoryproductions.com.
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