Fastest fingers first: how Twitter sped up customer engagement for Adidas's new shoe
Twitter, perhaps fittingly, won the ‘Best Use of Twitter’ category at The Drum Awards for Social Media in 2021 for its campaign for Adidas. Using its unique position to create a new Twitter ‘hack’, firmly associating the XGhosted shoe with speed itself. Here, the team behind the entry explains how the idea began.
Tapping into the competitive nature of football fans was an effective way to engage them on Adidas's latest, and fastest, shoe.
Adidas is in competition with Nike both on and off the pitch, vying for the attention of football fans in an attempt to prove their boots will make the best players. Adidas challenged Twitter to drive hype and desire for the new XGhosted football boots, by positioning them as the fastest football footwear in the market.
To truly convey to football fans that XGhosted boots represent speed, we had to produce an idea that would go beyond passive consumption - get them talking and engaging with the product.
We all know that football fans are incredibly competitive, always looking for the opportunity for one-upmanship. After looking in detail at the Twitter data on football fans, we discovered 75% of them are constantly scrolling through the Twitter feed during games, searching for updates and info. This led us to an idea that was a ‘match’ made in heaven.
Our idea was to fuel this scrolling behavior and ignite their competitive spirit. We turned a Twitter Thread (a series of connected Tweets) into a scrolling race, challenging fans to prove themselves worthy of wearing the fastest boots ever to grace the pitch. This was a bespoke hack – something that had never been done on the platform before.
By ‘liking’ the first Tweet in the thread, players started a virtual timer. They then scrolled as fast as they possibly could to the bottom, finally ‘liking’ the final Tweet in the thread to stop the timer. Their result was automatically reported in seconds, as we revealed if they reached XGhosted speed.
Tweeters were blown away by the hack and football fans’ competitive natures were unleashed. 95% of players completed the game and received a time, an incredibly successful conversion rate generating huge levels of engagement.
Fans challenged their friends, recorded themselves playing, boasted about their scores and some crafty competitor even went to the lengths of working out how to cheat the game to get the fastest time of 00:01! Now that’s next level speed.
This entry was a winner at The Drum Awards for Social Media. To find out more, including which competitions are currently open for entry, visit The Drum Awards website.
