Challenge

Adidas were challenged to promote their sustainability philosophy to the ones who litter their source of life - the Nile. Given that the Nile River is the 5th greatest contributor to the Ocean waste according to UN Environment report in 2018, (2) Egypt has been identified a potential market where adidas can leave a mark – a true opportunity where a huge challenge lied. Bringing its sustainability philosophy to life through the ‘Run for the Oceans’ campaign, a global movement to end marine plastic waste, it was completely irrelevant to Egyptians especially in a country where responsible communication has always adopted mainly societal and health topics rather than environmental, hence, the overall awareness on sustainability issues was almost non-existent.

So not only was it challenging to move Egyptians for our brand and its philosophy, but to also have them ‘'Run for the Oceans’ made our mission impossible. But we had ‘the one brand’ who always believed that ‘impossible is nothing’.

Inspiration

It takes Egyptians an ash away from the threshold of falling to take a stand against any harmful event, and a great deal of threat to have them care to move.

It took 30 years of tyranny for Egyptians to rebel against a broken system, 40% of Egyptian women are harassed before speaking out and actioning against one (1), 17.8% rise in accidents before passing traffic laws to curb accidents (2), 204 cases detected before paying attention to the SMA fatal disease (3), and many others that got the Egyptians unite over a sense of threat to act against them.

So, although Egyptians might believe that change is necessary, their lazy nature have always delayed their action and have turned them to social media as the hub to unite and create a change without moving a finger. Here came the new big thing in Egypt, influencer activism that had shed the light on social many threats, but our cause wasn't one of them. We aimed for more than a social movement but rather a revolutionary change of behavior that gets Egyptians run for a cause that they were oblivious of.

Idea

Credible exposure and genuine relevancy with our chosen influencers, we have chosen the most startling Nile facts to be the highlight of our 4 different videos which were also customized for each of our 4 influencers. The approach was to have the influencers relate personally to the problem being stated and so connect emotionally with the audience and allow them to relate, triggering them to RUN!

Growth

In a country that didn’t have sustainability as part of its system, and a lazy culture with no interest in running, adidas had Egyptians run and care for an environmental cause. Through a well allocated partnership, of only 4 influencers and in only 10 days, adidas had over 30,000 runners participate in the movement that reflects a major change of Egyptians’ behavior compared to the 7000 runners who participated in Egypt’s biggest marathon, resulting in adidas removing 4000 KGs of plastic waste from the Nile River. These results demonstrated almost 600% over achievement on the business KPI and number of participants have also translated in app downloads which have also been overachieved. (1) Not only so, but also, the campaign scored 475% better performance than the global assets given the local relevancy of the content leadership; the bank were awarded best mobile banking experience in the world for the past three years by Forrester, and the number one for customer experience in all priority markets.

WT Cairo adidas Run For The Oceans Video Case

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