The sneaker market has gotten extremely crowded making it difficult for new shoes hitting the market to make an impact. Adidas was launching the Never Made collection: mismatched silhouettes that blend the future and the past into one. We needed a way for this unique combination to stand out amongst the clutter of the market.

We invited our audience to design a new adidas silhouette via Instagram, turning our feed into an open-source livestream crowdsourcing ideas from 1 million fans. Our audience voted on design details in real-time for two days. Followers submitted names for the crowdsourced design, which was ultimately named “Boost Your Castella”.

We know from research around the target adidas consumer that creating elements of exclusivity and novelty would perform highly for the Never Made collection. Time and time again, we have seen that this consumer becomes more engaged when they can see behind the curtain, be part of the process, and feel like they can have an impact on the final product. Because the event was physical, we also needed to achieve social relevance through tactics this consumer uses frequently such as Instagram Live and GIPHY Sticker Packs. Using the input of 1 million fans of the brand meant that we were immediately bringing the product story to the masses and doing it in a way we knew they would strongly react to.

To launch the adidas Never Made collection, we opened the experience to our social audience. Live at the Never Made Cobbler Shop, we captured sneaker surgeon “Jack The Ripper” as he customized adidas silhouettes. Starting with an original upper, our audience voted on design details in real-time for two days. We even let our followers submit names for the crowdsourced design. The sneaker community’s best creatives helped to boost our buzz. Jaden Smith, Jonah Hill, and Hiroshi Fujiwara all attended.

Our focus on creating interactive elements that we knew the sneakerhead would engage with helped make Never Made one of our most successful activations of 2018. There were 1.1 million story views on Instagram as the weekend went on, as well as 1.2 million views of our Instagram Live coverage, which blew away live performance of all other activations in 2018. From an interactivity standpoint, there were over 125,000 votes on the interactive design sessions that eventually led to the creation and naming of a brand new shoe. Most importantly, the entire Never Made collection sold out at launch a few days later.