Digital marketing today is an excellent and productive method of promoting and creating awareness of businesses, different events like sports, products, and other essential processes. The growth of the internet, and especially the number of people using digital and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, is attracting firms to market their products and activities online to leverage internet benefits. Sports teams and sponsorship companies like Nike and Adidas are involved in digital marketing to promote and advise their products and games activities. The paper analyzes the “WhatsApp case study” for Adidas, summarizing its challenges to sports property, solutions, results, and benefits of digital marketing campaign implementation.
A Summary of the Digital Sports Marketing Case
“WhatsApp case study: Adidas helps amateur football teams with ‘are not ringers’ hotline.”
In February 2020, Adidas, a popular and highly competitive sportswear brand and company, built an effective WhatsApp hotline. This firm aimed to help amateur soccer teams, and clubs replace missing last-minute players with great global and competitive superstar talent. Adidas wanted to outstand and outsmart its sportswear competitors, including Nike, by focusing on where its biggest consumers spend their time online (Digital Training Academy, n.d.). The firm aimed to capitalize on and maximize multiple “closed” WhatsApp groups people use to organize popular soccer matches. Online, television and outdoor platforms continually pushed the WhatsApp “hotline” for individuals and groups to message. Kaka, a famous Brazilian football player, was helping to generate five million social media views and hot news headlines, boosting and increasing brand awareness.
Challenges Facing the Sports Property
Adidas launched its latest Predator soccer boots iteration during the digital online campaigns. It focused on the superior competitive advantage its boots bring to football players and personalities. In such a saturated and competitive sports shoes market, and in Adidas’ bid to outstand and outsmart its rivals, Reebok and Nike, it aimed for a relatable and modern strategy to reach its target industry and market of the UK’s amateur soccer players (Digital Training Academy, n.d.). The core market is organizing Sunday’s amateur league soccer teams and clubs through WhatsApp groups. It is a challenging “dark social” media channel to access through advertising and promotion, where brands and firms cannot track social and users’ sources and cannot market and advertise.
The Solution That Was Created To Address the Challenge
The online and primary television campaign was centered on one hundred percent unfair campaigns in the Netherlands at TBWA Neboko to introduce and launch Adidas’ new and latest Predator soccer boots. People also knew the boots as the Predator-Twenty Mutator. Through an online video, Adidas promotes its innovative and creative latest boots, emphasizing the unfair advantage given to wearers (Digital Training Academy, n.d.). Adidas is advertising its football boots as having a demon skin, a material layer that provides soccer players with a more excellent football grip, enabling them to generate superior spin. The boots wrap and spike the texture around their sides and front to align the leading ball’s contact points. David Beckham and Paul Pogba showcase their soccer boots in the launch video campaign. It also shows how the boot’s spike layer enhances the two footballers’ soccer skills.
The campaign’s hook was WhatsApp activation in London by Knowlton + Hill Strategies. Adidas built an active Rent-Pred hotline for amateur teams and clubs to contact and replace a football team member who dropped out at the last minute. Afterward, the replacement soccer player could wear Adidas’ latest Predator boots (Digital Training Academy, n.d.). OOH outside was providing additional support in publishing and promoting the firm’s WhatsApp hotline.
During the campaign, Adidas-sponsored soccer players were available for football matches last week after the fans shared fundamental information online through WhatsApp. Such information would include the soccer matches fans want players to appear in for them. The firm’s marketers could notify soccer fans on the game’s morning if their requests regarding the football match were successful (Parfenov & Akaev, 2019). Afterward, the rented soccer players would wear the new Adidas Predator footwear.
Adidas’ Rent-a-Pred sports campaigns lasted for around six days. All the clubs got a notification in the morning on whether their match request was acceptable and successful. The recruited soccer players were some top talents from London, like Adidas family members such as Eni Aluko (England), F2, and the United Kingdom soccer freestyling collective. Aluko would play a fantastic six-side match in London at Hoxton for their Sunday league football games, securing their seventh victory and scoring five beautiful goals. Kaka, a Ballon d’Or soccer winner and former player for the Brazilian national team, would appear in the campaign. He was a participant in a North London seven-side football match.
Summary of the Results of the Digital Marketing Campaign
The players (Rent-Pred soccer players) had a stunning win rate of 92 percent in all games. The goals scored were twenty-nine, an excellent achievement for the campaign. Kaka’s video clip was featured in ITN News, Sky News, and Sky Sports News bulletins. It was also appearing in six more online and internet publications. During the Adidas campaign, Kaka’s appearance was influential and got over five million views.
Benefits Provided by Implementing This Digital Marketing Campaign
The Adidas WhatsApp campaign has multiple benefits for the firm, amateur soccer leagues, and players. The firm built intimate and close relationships with its consumers. The campaign allowed Adidas to form a direct and stronger relationship with an influential person’s smaller community (Alwan & Alshurideh, 2022). Over five million views from the marketing show that the campaign was effective in reaching a large number of target audiences. Such viewers got information and awareness of Adidas’ new boots (Predator soccer boots). Reaching such a great audience would help the firm beat other sportswear companies like Reebok and Nike.
The sponsorship campaign was a win-win-win event for sports teams, sponsors, and consumers. The firm would gain more reach and presence among its target consumers. The campaign helped Adidas attain its marketing goals, but players and the amateur league got some benefits. There were good results on Sunday soccer league games across the United Kingdom, as after six days, it registered over twenty-nine goal scores. There was also an improvement in the win rate of 90 percent among Rent-Pred soccer players. The league was also advertised on numerous channels, such as Sky Sports, making it known (Guo, 2022). The new boots from Adidas were helpful to players and contributed to more scores and an improvement in the win rate of players.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is an effective and productive strategy to promote businesses, products, and different events like sports. It helps to reach a broader market of millions of online users on sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Sports teams and sponsorship firms such as Nike, Reebok, and Adidas use digital marketing to promote their products. The sponsorship campaign benefits sponsors, sports teams, and consumers. Through its WhatsApp campaign, Adidas was able to reach its target audience by promoting its new boots and improving amateur players’ performances.
References
Alwan, M., & Alshurideh, M. (2022). The effect of digital marketing on purchase intention: Moderating effect of brand equity. International Journal of Data and Network Science, 6(3), 837–848.
Digital Training Academy. (n.d.). Digital marketing case study – WhatsApp case study: Adidas helps amateur football teams with ‘rent a Ringer’ hotline – Digital Training Academy. Digital Training Academy – Building stronger digital teams. https://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/casestudies/2020/03/whatsapp_case_study_adidas_helps_amateur_football_teams_with_rent_a_ringer_hotline.php
Guo, Q. (2022). Analysis of Sports Industry Strategies During Covid-19 Pandemic: Cases from Nike and Adidas. Highlights in Business, Economics and Management, pp. 2, 142–146.
Parfenov, M., & Akaev, E. (2019). Improving Advertising Activity of the Organization–Case: Adidas.
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