The sports scene in Egypt has been fairly a clean slate, sportswear brands are considered niche which is shown through the value of the sportswear market vs. FMCGs proving people's low interest in sports, let alone running. Given that the Nile River is the 5th greatest contributor to the Ocean waste according to UN Environment report in 2018, Egypt has been identified a potential market where adidas can leave a mark bringing its sustainability philosophy to life through the ‘Run for the Oceans’ campaign, a global movement to end marine plastic waste. It was completely irrelevant to Egyptians especially in a country where responsible communication has always adopted mainly societal and health topics rather than environmental, hence, the overall awareness on sustainability issues was almost non-existent. Our objective for this campaign was to influence our audience to take the necessary action and positively contribute to the cause.

The impact of social throughout the past year has changed significantly where ‘Influencer Activism’ emerged - a change in the influencers' content and so change on audiences' perception on the power of social and influencers. To answer to our strategic idea, we created a social stunt on Instagram, where 75% of our audience are using 'Influencer Activism' to create a social movement that will lead to an action. By inspiring our audience to ‘run’, sell our brand and promote to our cause, the social stunt had two main phases, teasing and shocking. Phase 01 was to build anticipation on the “running” momentum, while keeping it real our 4 influencers shared their runs and posted their results from adidas app on their accounts. Phase 2 to appeal hard to our audience emotionally, urging the participation and taking a stance through 4 different videos which were customized for each Influencer.

Egyptians might believe that change is necessary, their lazy nature have always delayed their action and have turned them to social media as the hub to unite and create a change without moving a finger. The ‘harming love’ built our idea, shocking Egyptians with how their low awareness on sustainability is harming the Nile River. Our target audience, the youth who are 41% of the population known to spend an average of 7H 36M a day surfing the internet from social media consumption to online gaming to watching videos, 79.9% of whom are on Instagram. Through a social conversation generating guaranteed engagement, we ensured the audience's change of behavior from being lazy to active participants, having them download the app, participate in the runs and track the impact of the runs on the collection of waste from the Nile River.

Through a social stunt on Instagram to inspire our audience to run and promote our cause. We created a well allocated partnership, of only 4 influencers and in only 10 days, adidas had over 30,000 runners participate in the movement. The stunt had two main phases, phase 1 was to build anticipation while keeping it real. Our 4 influencers' shared their runs from adidas app on Instagram, each post displayed the route map which were the campaign initials paving the way for the cause reveal and what the initials stand for. Phase 2, we had to choose the most startling Nile facts in our 4 different influencers' videos to connect emotionally with the audience triggering them to run. Following the Influencers' reveal, the brand united the voices of the influencers in one film and launched on its MENA page.

In a country that didn’t have sustainability as part of its system, and a lazy culture with no interest in running, adidas had Egyptians run and care for an environmental cause. Through a well allocated partnership, of only 4 influencers and in only 10 days, adidas had over 30,000 runners participate in the movement that reflects a major change of Egyptians’ behavior compared to the 7000 runners who participated in Egypt’s biggest marathon, resulting in adidas removing 4000 KGs of plastic waste from the Nile River. These results demonstrated almost 600% over achievement on the business KPI and number of participants have also translated in app downloads which have also been overachieved. Not only so, but also, the campaign scored 475% better performance than the global assets given the local relevancy of the content.