Winner 2023

Luxury & Lifestyle

Brand

adidas

Entered by:

EssenceMediacom

Ozworld

Credited:

Jam 3

The Challenge

adidas Originals have been dressing the feet of style icons for decades. Though by 2022 they were losing their lustre in lifestyle, lagging behind Nike in terms of originality, innovation and dynamism amongst Gen-Z globally (Kantar).

Our brief was to boost perceptions of the adidas Originals label as a lifestyle and cultural innovator, leading the conversation around what it means to be original today when it comes to streetwear, while hyping the new fluid Ozworld sneaker collection.

Ozworld is the franchise name for Ozweego, an adidas Originals product launched in the 90s and a major sales driver. When Ozweego first launched, its bold design shocked the market, embodying a spirit of unbound discovery.

Despite many iterations, hype around Ozweego and sales were declining. The Ozworld franchise needed a revamp to recapture its original spirit.

According to Kantar, the key brand perception drivers Originals needed to strengthen for winning in lifestyle were ‘help me express myself’, ‘cutting edge designs’ and ‘validation of seeing others wearing for fashion’.

That insight created some clear targets for our team. We needed to:

– Launch the Ozworld product range by driving mass product awareness (reach), purchase intent (share of search) and sales.

– Use innovative media solutions that engage youth and spark earned media in culture.

– Increase adidas Originals’ brand perception drivers

The Content Solution

Our key insight was that Gen-Z, the most fluid and digital generation yet, define themselves online (one in three say their online identity is their most authentic self).

Research told us that Gen-Z make up approximately 60% of the 400M users in the metaverse, broadly defined as parallel persistent digital worlds, featuring avatars, digital currencies, and the ability to own, create and trade digital assets.

What Gen-Z love about the metaverse is they can, in theory, be whoever they want to be, free from pressures to conform IRL. But the options for self-expression in the metaverse are limited. Most platforms only offer standard, generic skins or expensive NFT-avatars (ranging from a few hundred dollars up to $10K).

Our big idea was to unlock fluidity in the metaverse by providing tech solutions and experiences that enabled Gen-Z to be their true unique selves. All powered by Ozworld, this approach would launch the sneaker collection in a fresh way whilst providing Gen-Z with an ability they really wanted in the virtual worlds: self-expression

The content generated from Gen-Z’s usage of these metaverse tools could then fuel earnt media and be amplified into the real world to influence the wider youth streetwear audience of more than half a billion worldwide.

To deliver the big idea, Jam 3 created the world’s first personality-based avatar generator. Powered by AI, it would enable users to create their own Ozworld avatars and explore different virtual worlds with one unique identity.

In addition, we created immersive Ozworld experiences in the metaverse. Within these experiences, Gen-Z and creators could celebrate their own avatars, design their own style, spaces and play.

The content produced from these experiences would then be broadcasted back into the real world, fuelling excitement around the Ozworld sneaker collection and positioning the Originals label as a cultural innovator.

We created strategic partnerships with key tech platforms (Tencent, Fortnite and ReadyPlayerMe) and fuelled engagement with our message, ensuring that we covered all the major adidas regions at scale (Europe, North America, LATAM and APAC).

Working with the tech platform’s developers and analysts gave us added insight into Gen-Z’s behaviours and needs that helped tailor the tools and experiences, ensuring that the Ozworld activity was fully baked into the platforms.

The Media/Content Amplification Solution

Jam 3 built the world’s first AI generative avatar platform based on users’ personality and inspired by the fluid Ozworld collection.

Users were prompted to answer a few simple personality questions to generate their own unique avatar – such as ‘how much do others influence you’, ‘do you prefer order or chaos’, etc.

They then picked their favourite Ozworld trainer (from a choice of 3 new silhouettes), before the avatars were built with a range of virtual adidas garments that matched each user’s different character traits.

With 60 colour combinations, 24 materials and 12 different add-ons, we had potential to create 10 million unique avatars.

Through our partnership with Ready Player.Me, users could take their Ozworld avatar into more than 2,000 different metaverse platforms, games and apps including VRChat, Somnium Space, Mona and The Nemesis.

Having built an army of Ozworld avatars, we then created new virtual experiences for them to enjoy:

In China, we hosted a virtual Ozworld festival in Tencent’s TMELAND.

With Korean-American rapper Jay Park and Chinese-American rapper MC Jin headlining, attendees had to design their own Ozworld avatar to gain access.

Once in, they could hang out, dance, play games and flaunt their own avatar on a catwalk that was then amplified to the real world at scale via giant 3D digital OOH screens across Asia’s mega cities, such as Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Seoul

In the West we built an Ozworld within Fortnite.

We invited three Tik Tok creators to design three bespoke areas, tailored to their life story and personality traits.

The trio – Avemoves, Sophodoph, and Noelgoescrazy – embodied the Ozwold creed of self-expression and streetstyle and also pushed the content out to their communities on Tik Tok (driving 15 million views).

We built a map that featured mini-games, fully customisable and playable worlds that embodied the Ozworld style. Fortnite influencers kicked off the games, livestreamed on Twitch.

Users were also able to enter their avatars into a competition to feature in the campaign, broadcast city-wide across DOOH screens in cities in Europe.

The Result

Inverting the traditional campaign approach to be metaverse-first drove exceptionally high reach. We hit 642 million impressions and by facilitating the new age of originality, we boosted brand affinity by 11 points.

Our uniquely-you avatar generator created more than 10M avatars, enabling a new form of fluid self-expression, flooding the web across 2,000 metaverse platforms and sub-realms. Reaching into spaces we traditionally can’t go and populating the virtual space with self-expression driven by adidas.

Users even started selling their own avatars as NFTs (spiking adidas’ NFT price by 162%).

The metaverse experiences drove high reach. The TMELAND festival was attended by 7.5 million people, the Tik Tok creators drove 15 million views of the Ozworld Fortnite Hub.

They also drove high dwell time, with the Ozworld Fortnite hub delivering 12 minutes average play time (+33% benchmark) and the mini-games in Fortnite delivered 4.1 million minutes played.

The DOOH create your avatar competition was delivered across 396 OOH sites, with 3.1M impressions delivered and 2M impressions delivered for the winning designs across DOOH networks.

adidas Original’s share of search increased fivefold on Baidu and by 57% on Google.

Across our key targets, we smashed our goal of driving mass product awareness (reach), purchase intent (share of search) and sales.

  • We dramatically boosted adidas Originals’ brand perception drivers.
  • We secured valuable validation by being seen on others and ‘creators’.
  • Franchise awareness increased 5% worldwide.
  • Brand favourability increased 9%, and +10% for ‘is my kind of brand’.

Kantar engagement diagnostics showed the campaign increased perception of ‘offering cutting edge designs and innovation’ by 17% and ‘you see others wearing for fashion’ by 7%.

And on sales we boosted purchase intent by between nine and 16% in different markets and converted into real sales, with the hero collection smashing sales targets.