Adidas ‘#MyNeoLabel’ / Iris

Snapchat is one of the fastest-growing social media networks so it is no wonder that more and more brands are beginning to explore the potential of the popular app as a marketing tool. Particularly those brands that are targeting a young audience can find great opportunities in Snapchat, with the majority of users in the 18-34 age bracket. The photo-sharing app which encourages physical interaction with its features is proving an effective way to get customers to actively engage with brands. This is perfectly demonstrated by Adidas’ new initiative to promote its youth brand Adidas Neo.

The popular sports label has opened up a competition encouraging users to create their own designs for its Neo clothing range via the social media channel. Running until 20 October, the promotion, created with the help of agency Iris, invites users to follow ‘adidasneo’ on Snapchat and watch the brand’s Snapchat story. The funky video sees models sporting the new collection in pure white, giving users the opportunity to screenshot the range and utilise Snapchat’s Doodle tool to put their own stamp on it. Fans can then enter the competition by sending their drawn-on images to Adidas by starting a Snapchat ‘chat’ with adidasneo’s channel.

Dubbed as the brand’s ‘first ever Snapchat-created collection’, four competition winners who come up with the most original designs will be picked to visit Adidas’ headquarters in Herzogenaurach, Germany and attend a Design Bootcamp event where they will work alongside Adidas’ Neo design team to create four final designs which will be brought to life. The lucky winners can even take home and wear the final pieces.

This isn’t the first time that Adidas has dabbled with marketing through Snapchat. The brand has recently experimented with Lenses and Geofilters to promote new products, plus enlisted influencers such as artists Stormzy and Pharrell Williams to create Snapchat stories in order to raise hype around the brand. Adidas also recently claimed that, although the social channel is currently difficult to measure, it looks as though its Snapchat work is receiving a higher retention rate compared to YouTube, meaning that people are spending a longer time viewing content on one channel than the other.  This is good news for Snapchat who hope for marketers to view the app as the preferred platform, as more advertising spend is moved into mobile.

The work for Adidas Neo, by Matt Carter and Jon Wedlake at Iris and directed by Ehsan Bhatti at Skunk London, is a great demonstration of the exciting possibilities of marketing through Snapchat. The promotion is particularly smart as it not only draws in Adidas fans and makes the brand tangible for them, but the idea of personalization is something that could be capitalized upon. User’s Neo designs not only go towards potentially winning a trip to Adidas HQ, but could also be used as insight for the brand into the kind of products that fans want to see.

The competition also works well in that the use of the Snapchat app is fit for purpose. The basic capabilities of Snapchat’s Doodle tool complements Adidas’ bold and simplistic designs – its most famous, of course, being its token three white stripes – making it seem more plausible to turn budding designers’ amateur Snapchat work into the real modern Neo collection.

Ultimately, Adidas’ #MyNeoLabel campaign is effective as it encompasses its young target audience. With more and more young people playing around with all the new quirks that Snapchat has to offer as they are released, the campaign’s interactive element, along with the opportunity to be expressive and creative, is something that is bound to appeal to and engage with this generation.