Breaking the pattern with adidas GLITCH

Background

Start-up culture is ripe with experimentation and originality. Risk breeds creativity and these are the companies driving meaningful change in our industry.

But… If you’re a successful, well established company delivering year-on-year growth as the no.1 Football brand in Europe, how do you break with tradition and reap the benefits of change? How do you behave like a start up?

You have to break all your own rules, build a team with autonomy and give them all the confidence to experiment together with the consumer.

The brief was to launch the new GLITCH football boot, in a completely new way, to an audience of urban football players in London.

Idea

The whole concept of GLITCH is one of breaking patterns and doing things differently. This Influenced everything from the business model, to the approach with consumers, to the launch strategy and image choices.

The audience was heavily into digital and social media and big on mobile usage, so  efforts were not focussed on the traditional media channels typical of a football boot launch.

Instead, a dedicated unique eCommerce solution was built that was delivered purely through mobile. A mobile first app designed to reach young players where they spent most of their time – on their phones.

This app was a complex ecosystem that housed everything in the customer journey. From their first interaction with the product, through to booking and purchasing, to delivery and rewards.

The product could ONLY be bought through the app. These boots weren’t available in stores or even online. The fitting and purchase functions of the app were locked and it was made invite only. With codes only available through a small community of influencers at launch. A community that grew gradually and organically with every purchase.

The idea was to start small and keep it personal. It was all done from the ground up, created for a generation that expects and lives within a world of scrappy creativity. So an aesthetic was designed that reflected that ethos and those beliefs. The task was to create an experience that spoke to them, that looked contemporary, high end and crafted but not corporate.

They made the interface exploratory. Curiosity was rewarded. They were given something they could understand but that felt as if it was deciphered. The aim was to captivate while being informative and useful. To feel human and experimental without feeling broken. The result was an app that feels enjoyable to use and pleasant to explore.

Results

GLITCH trended immediately and boots were in demand from day one. Players took to social media begging for referral codes from their contacts. In the first week, they made it into the ‘HOT this Week’ list in the Apple app store. They even saw access codes being sold on eBay.

Despite the controlled release, the GLITCH app has had over 64,000 downloads in the first six months. The codes seeded by the first influencers had a 75% conversion rate to a boot sale and they’ve continued to see an 89% redemption rate on codes being activated.

All without a scrap of media spend, zero advertising or sponsorship and no celebrity endorsement. GLITCH transformed one of football's most recognisable brands into one of its hottest start-ups. It turned the industry upside down and created a completely new relationship between a brand and consumer.