Adidas Customers are Big Ad-blockers, so they have Moved from "Advertising" to "Social Media"

Great to see a big brand realising that people use ad-blockers and that the place to be is where their customers are.  On Social.

With a measurement not on eyeballs or impressions but on engagement.

As with any sports brand there is a big use of influencers.  Influence marketing, always puts your products and services in front of people a new audience and the brand also understands that people don't buy into "Adidas" they buy into the fact that Pharrell Williams uses Adidas.  Subtle difference, but a difference anyway.  This is the same for B2C and B2B.

They are also taking a brave risk by using user generated content (UGC) but after-all who wants to see some Adidas corporate marketing, nobody does, what we want to see is user generated content (it will be funnier, provide more engagement, be more of the now).  We will then share and amplify, making sure that the Adidas message gets far and wide.  You could call it free advertising, but the sort that isn't blocked in fact we like it.

If this is interesting also check out Copa90, as Alex Low says "They don’t buy any football footage at all, it is all crowd sourced from the fans, employee advocacy on steroids and massive brands use them because it is genuinely authentic."  Boom!