With long lines, occasional violence, and resellers buying up inventory and artificially inflating prices, fans are opting out of the sneaker drop.

Adidas Originals tasked us with launching a new colorway for the iconic NMD shoe, while engaging their core, hyper-passionate fan base while also driving conversion and sales lift of NMD capsule collection.

The campaign needed to get NMD’s fanbase to stop in their tracks and engage with a branded experience that opened new paths to purchase.

For the launch of the exclusive adidas Camo Collection, Champs Sports and adidas Originals wanted to ensure their product went to real fans - not shoe resellers.

We reinvented the product drop, replacing the static queue with an engaging brand experience that was designed for real NMD fans.

Across the country, WebAR-enabled wild postings transformed city street corners into instant hidden drop zones - no app download required. Fans who found the posters could skip the line, and click straight to purchase.

We provided local streetwear influencers with custom stickers so that they could create their own hidden drop sites. Influencers shared their sticker locations on Instagram—so only true fans who followed along could find them.

By eliminating lines and outsmarting resellers, “Hidden in Plain Sight” rewrote the rules of the product drop.

The NMD audience is hyper-passionate about NMD. But the traditional product drop has become unpleasant with long lines, violence, and resellers buying all the inventory to sell at a profit, spiking the price of the shoes. Real fans miss out, and become alienated as a result.

Our approach was to reimagine the product drop, creating an experience that would beat resellers and get the NMD into the hands of true fans. Inspired by the camo colorway, we created product drop zones that were “Hidden in Plain Sight” - only actual fans would know where to look. We shared drop zone locations across Instagram, activating with hyper-localized streetwear influencers in cities that are often overlooked creating an epic drop that delighted our target audience.

“Hidden In Plain Sight” launched on December 14th, 2018 and ran until January 31st, 2019. We distributed 590 WebAR-enabled posters across five US cities that are often overlooked by adidas (from a marketing POV).

We activated five local streetwear micro-influencers, providing them with the new gear, and their own custom-designed WebAR-enabled wild-postings to create additional distribution channels. We worked with influencers to co-create Instagram Stories, editorial content along with interactive city guides to share the hidden dropzone locations with their communities.

WebAR turned posters and wild-postings into hidden product drop zones that only real fans would spot. Fans could explore the new NMD Camo Pack in immersive, interactive AR before clicking through to a mobile optimized commerce site guaranteeing access to the shoe.

The experience was deliberately designed to engage and drive conversion with a small, hyper targeted base of core NMD fans—activated by the local influencers they love.

Our brief was to create a moment that would stop fans in their tracks, and ultimately drive purchase. We did just that.

Posters and wild-postings generated almost 36M impressions. On average, fans spent 2m45s exploring the WebAR-enabled product dropzones and 87% of fans who activated the AR experience converted by clicking through to the ecommerce store.

During the campaign we saw a 168% sales lift of NMD Camo apparel. Most importantly we made sure that only real fans got their hands on the new product, by creating a product drop zone only real fans would spot.