adidas Originals wanted to reward Donald Glover fans at Coachella with early access to his soon-to-be released adidas Originals collaboration using a fun drop mechanic. With all eyes on him for his Coachella set, our key objective was to create a unique sneaker drop experience that cuts through the noise of the festival, is intimate yet surprising, and accurately reflects Donald Glover’s creative values and identity.

We played off of lo-fi tech in light of Coachella’s connectivity issues and created an experience that doesn’t depend on high speeds and security measures. Just ahead of Donald Glover’s headlining set we unveiled one of his signature adidas Originals sneakers by AirDropping fans at random and giving them 60 minutes to pick up the shoes. We surprised and delighted his fans in a non-conventionally hype way, and gave them their desired social currency: hyped product and iconic moments.

We unveiled exclusive sneakers on one of the biggest stages in the world with an innovative sneaker drop experience that cut through the noise of the festival, was intimate yet surprising, and accurately reflected Donald Glover’s creative values and identity, in a way that was “anti-hype”, subtle and unconventional. We tackled one of the biggest challenges, connectivity and security measures, by playing off of lo-fi tech that still completely resonated with the Coachella group at large. Using a simple AirDrop as a sneaker drop mechanic motivated and allowed fans to share photos and screenshots on social. The directness of AirDrop does not necessitate an app, download or complicated technology so we were able to get straight to the true fans. We also leveraged sneaker and streetwear press who were following Donald Glover throughout the event anyways, and flipped the narrative of conventional, big surprise drops through this subtle guerilla tactic.

The primary audience was fans of Donald Glover and Coachella attendees made up the secondary audience. We wanted to avoid participants who would only do it for the gram. In order to get straight to the true fans of Donald Glover and to make the reach as organic as possible, we conducted extensive research into his identity and fan base. We went beyond just the fans of his music and looked into his subreddits to analyze how the audience interprets, speculates and shares his output.

We designed the AirDrop to say that it was from Donald Glover’s iPhone and used the Donald Glover logo so that actual fans could recognize that it was a legitimate engagement. A truly intimate moment is created when the fans who were adventurous enough to accept a random AirDrop realize that they had fully recognized and understood Donald Glover’s creative vision by trusting this tactic.

It took us one week to concept and strategize for the perfect sneaker drop experience that would resonate with Childish Gambino’s fans and Coachella culture at large. During the strategy phase we considered how we would cut through the noise of over 60 brands present at the festival, the notorious connectivity issues and the fans’ desire for exclusive moments and products. It took us another week to design and two weeks of production and execution to ensure every touchpoint was meaningful and added to the adidas Originals and Donald Glover brands.

We had a custom-built CMS to keep track of inventory in real-time as fans began to accept the AirDrops. Everything from the actual drops to pick up locations and instructions were carefully considered in order to prevent overcrowding and confusion, and to achieve Donald Glover’s goal of getting the fans to actually wear the shoes for his set.

We surprised and delighted true fans in an intimate way and gave them their desired social currency: hyped product and iconic moments. Our sneaky AirDrop operation was the most talked about activation at Coachella and went viral online, resulting in 527 million editorial impressions from publications like Esquire, Vogue and Complex, and 47 million social media impressions. Some of Instagram’s largest viral meme accounts, such as kalesalad, shared the AirDrop as well. There were over 307,000 likes and 50,000 retweets on a single tweet showing the screenshot of the AirDrop.

The simple AirDrop mechanic motivated and allowed fans to share photos and screenshots on social, flexing their exclusive product win to other festival attendees and friends. We leveraged sneaker and streetwear press who were following Donald Glover throughout the event anyways, and flipped the narrative of conventional, big surprise drops through this subtle guerilla tactic.