Adidas Olympics - Chinese Volleyball
For the 2008 Olympics, Adidas was battling Nike for the Chinese consumer market. To target its volleyball consumers, it was facing a challenge. Challenge
Volleyball was once a very popular sport among young Chinese adults, especially when the Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team won the Olympics in 1984. However, in the following decades, volleyball’s popularity declined, and the sport became known to be mainly for ‘older people.’ Goal
Adidas was a partner with the 2008 Beijing Olympics and a main sponsor of the Chinese Women’s Volleyball Team. The company’s goal was to increase interest in volleyball among Chinese youth (age 14-24). It wanted to change the volleyball’s boring image into an exciting and entertaining sport - in order to sell more of its products.
Research
- Review findings of research on Chinese youth and sports, which revealed:
- China’s youth is obsessed with celebrities, stars and icons
- The target audience is interested in speed and ferocity
- China’s youth has a desire for ownership and involvement
- 18 million Chinese high school students use the internet
- Based on the research, the PR firm decided to create an online campaign that focused on volleyball’s icons, the sports speed and ferocity, and high youth involvement. PR Strategies/Tactics
- Adidas created a Chinese Olympic Team blog (something that had not been done before).
- Each player of the Chinese Volleyball Team received a ‘glamorized’ professional makeover. The makeover was captured on camera, and the pictures were put on Chinese Olympic Team blog.
- Six short videos showcasing volleyball as an exciting and fast sport were created and released on the web. The videos were unique and creative. One, for example, showed a fire hydrant's gushing water blowing a person in the air - compared to the speed of a volleyball shot. Watch it here:
- A volleyball chant competition was created. It involved the public by asking them to come up with a cheer or song that could be used to cheer on the national volleyball team. The video or audio products could be uploaded to a separate website, where the public could vote on the best cheer. Results
- The videos went viral on the web. They were watched more than 5.5 billion times in the first three months of the campaign.
- In a survey, 73% of viewers believed the videos were interesting and “innovative,” while almost 80% forwarded the videos to online friends.
- The volleyball chant competition was successful. The website received almost 400,000 unique visits in the first three months of the campaign.
- The blog received about 161,000 unique visits in the first three months of the campaign. The team members’ makeovers drove much of that traffic, and the pictures and website were covered by several media outlets. Information retrieved from: http://blog.ogilvypr.com/portfolio/adidas/
