Vol. 79: Reddit x adidas: Humanizing pro sports 👟

Changing the narrative within an entire industry or category is an ambitious goal. 

But we’ve seen plenty of brands do this effectively. Dove challenged the beauty industry’s unrealistic, harmful depictions of women and girls with their Real Beauty campaign. Athletic Brewing targets perception of the nonalcoholic beverage category. And recently, adidas launched a campaign aimed at changing the narrative within sports. 

This week, Case Studied explores how tapped into Reddit’s community to lift brand association and favorability. 

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The Brief:

The push behind this campaign came when adidas noticed an alarming trend: interest in competitive sports has been waning among Gen Z, largely because of the immense pressure that comes with playing competitive sports. 

Recognizing the long-term impact this trend could have if it continued, adidas set out to reframe that narrative and establish a deeper connection with this younger audience. 

The brand has been steadily building a diverse roster of sponsored young athletes (even starting to sign high school athletes). So they tapped into their roster for a campaign that humanized the experiences of elite athletes. 

The Execution:

Adidas partnered with Reddit’s in-house creative team, KarmaLab, to launch the “You Got This” campaign. They chose a handful of adidas’ younger athletes, spanning a variety of sports to participate:

• NFL players Rome Odunze and David Njoku 🏈

• US soccer player Catarina Macario ⚽

• WNBA player Aliyah Boston 🏀

Using the interactive format of AMAs (ask me anything) on Reddit, athletes fielded questions about both the pressures and the joys of their athletic careers. It kicked off with a Reddit post from each athlete announcing the AMA. Boston’s read: 

Once the questions were submitted, videos were filmed of Boston and the other athletes answering a few hand-picked questions. The videos were posted to Reddit, showing the athletes answer questions with a light, authentic approach that avoided being overly polished. None of the videos were over two minutes in length and each athlete addressed a question about how they deal with pressure.

The Results:

The You Got This campaign was one of the highest-performing sports-related AMA’s on Reddit in 2024. 

Adidas saw a lift in brand association and favorability, and the campaign recently won a Shorty Award in the Other Platform Partnership category, which “honors the effective and creative integration of an influencers, celebrity, or ambassador into a social media or digital marketing campaign, project, or piece of content optimized for a select social media platform.” The social platforms include Facebook, Threads, and Reddit, among others.

And while it certainly wasn’t adidas’ largest marketing campaign of the year, they were able to successfully create a memorable brand moment on Reddit, a platform many brands struggle to breakthrough on.

Key Takeaways:

1) Recognize when to target trends in your category.

Adidas focused on addressing a larger-scale trend within their industry. Noticing the declining interest in sports, they focused on shifting perception that could have a potentially harmful impact on the brand down the line. 

Keeping tabs on industry trends is helpful but taking it a step further by addressing those trends in your marketing can be a strategic (and worthwhile) move. Consider what category trends could be relevant for your brands to target, and how you could bring them into a campaign. 

2) Bring brand values into the spotlight.

By running this campaign, adidas positioned their brand as one that values mental health and wellbeing, and open, honest conversation. And that brand perception and positioning laddered up to their larger goal of building connections with younger audiences through these values. 

Consider how you let your brand values speak in your campaigns. If there's an opportunity to give them more airtime to take the stage, it could be a way to build or deepen your connection with your audience, both existing and new.  

3) Sometimes, products can sit in the background.

There was no mention of any adidas products in You Got This because the campaign wasn’t about selling anything. It was a way for the brand to speak to and connect with a specific audience about a specific concern. 

What types of campaigns has your brand been focused on? Are products the center stage in most or all of them? Explore the ways you can engage your audience in conversations they care about. Products and freebies have their place but your customers may appreciate it if you diversify your marketing messages and touchpoints.

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