Adidas: How (Not) to Manage the Unexpected

Courtesy of Facebook.com/DerrickRose

Better safe, than sorry.

It’s a lesson we've all been told growing up. Whether it’s packing that extra sweater, or checking to see if you locked the door, it’s a way of thinking many of us have adopted in our everyday lives.

In the unpredictable world of sports marketing, it's a phrase to live by. 

Now, being safe doesn't necessarily mean sticking to tradition or being conservative. It just means it’s important to have all your bases covered; or rather, to always be prepared for the unexpected.

Adidas knows this all too well.

It happened in April of 2012. Just two months after signing Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose to a 14-year, $250 million dollar contract, he tore his ACL and would be sidelined for at least 9-12 months.

Other sporting goods manufacturers would have shelved Rose and shifted focus on to a different athlete. I mean, really, how can you sell a branded shoe if the athlete is injured?

But in the rubble, Adidas saw an opportunity.

Enter:  “The Return of Derrick Rose.”

#TheReturn (as it's known on social media) was a 6-video web series that chronicled Rose's rehabilitation process. The digital campaign stretched over a four month period and emphasized Rose's hunger and determination to come back.

Since the campaign launched last August, the series has been viewed 7 million times on YouTube, the number of Twitter followers for @adidashoops has increased by 100 percent and discussions about Adidas on Facebook have gone up by 200 percent.  

How did Adidas manage to accomplish this? They covered their bases.

Insight: Adidas listened to what people were saying online before reacting. It’s a simple, yet effective practice brands neglect when things go array. The outpouring of support for Rose on social media was the inspiration behind the campaign.

Social Media: If you want to address an issue in a timely fashion, look no further than social media. Adidas ditched  traditional media outlets like TV and print, and went digital. Social platforms like YouTube and Twitter enabled Adidas to connect with its consumers directly. This resulted in a stronger online brand presence for Adidas. 

Emotional Appeal: In order for a brand to succeed in managing the unexpected, it has to know what strengths to play up. Adidas understood Rose’s appeal and used the campaign to highlight everything fans love about him.

When the campaign came to a close six months ago, Adidas was lauded for their ability to turn a nightmare situation into marketing gold.

But those critics may now be rethinking their stance.   

See, what Adidas failed to recognize is that managing the unexpected is an active evaluation of the situation. Just because a campaign ends, it doesn't mean you're home free.

The problem now is that Rose has still not come back.

Under normal circumstances, an athlete's decision to sit out would not be problem. But #TheReturn created such a hype, that it led fans to believe that Rose was in a position to come back sooner, rather than later. And after being teased with this thought for months by Adidas, fans are not taking this outcome well.  

Here's the bottom line: If Adidas ever plans to sell another Derrick Rose shoe in the future, it needs to do some major damage control. Waiting any longer to respond or ignoring the issue completely will tarnish its brand image. 

Adidas had the right idea with #TheReturn, but the message behind the campaign needs to be reworked going forward. And to do so, Adidas needs to go back to the basics:

Listen: Adidas needs to once again listen to what is being said about before they can act accordingly.   

Be realistic: Rose may be an extremely gifted basketball player, but he’s still human. Recovering from a serious injury like an ACL tear requires patience and even when he does return, it will take Rose a while before he plays at an MVP level again. Embrace this fact. Take the theatrics down a notch and give fans the chance to see the situation clearly.

Stay true to Adidas: Adidas is all about helping athletes perform their best. So instead of looking to expedite the rehab process on camera, Adidas needs to show that it genuinely cares about the well-being of its athletes and consumers. Recovery is not a race, but rather a process. The sooner Adidas accepts this, the better chance it will have in reconnecting with its consumers.

Stay true to Derrick Rose: As the brand behind Rose, Adidas is doing him a major disservice by letting him get most of the bad rap for his decision not come back yet. After all, would Rose even be facing this much criticism had #TheReturn not created the expectation that he is coming back soon?

Developing an advertising campaign around an injured athlete is risky business, but companies have found a way to make it work. For example, when LA Lakers guard Kobe Bryant went down with an injury last month, Nike released an ad paying homage to him. It was a simple, yet powerful print ad that even caught Bryant off guard.

Regardless of how Adidas chooses to address the "is he coming back-or is he not" soap opera that has become of Rose's life, it's imperative every possible is accounted for.  

Parisa Durrani is a student in the Masters of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications program at Northwestern University. She's passionate about all things NBA and can be found on Twitter @ParisaDurrani 

Want to be President? Go beyond 140 characters.

     As a student of Integrated Marketing & Communication at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, as well as a dedicated politico who has worked both on Capital Hill as well as for a private political marketing firm, the new frontier of potential use of social media in the GOP primary election cycle kept me up at night with excitement. In the wake of a successful grassroots organization through technology in the 2008 Obama campaign, I had high hopes for the Republican hopefuls to launch ground-breaking and noteworthy IMC and Social Media campaigns. Unfortunately, my hopes have yet to be fulfilled. I would contend that not a single candidate has been utilizing social media to its full extent, and that these campaigns should take some pointers from the consumer marketing industry and create an exceptional social media experience if they want to grow their social presence and draw in and mobilize communities. 

Don’t get me wrong...some of these campaigns have made attempts at a social media presence, to mild success. All of the candidates have at least one Twitter account, with which they tweet fairly regularly. Mitch Romney was the first candidate to purchase “promoted tweets” and has received hundreds of retweets and thousands of clicks as a result. The Romney campaign also bought YouTube ads after N.J. Gov. Chris Christie threw his support Romney’s way. Just last week, I received a personal direct message on Twitter from the Huntsman campaign, asking me how I felt about the campaign and if I wanted to volunteer. This personal touch and appeal was an incredible idea with great execution by the Huntsman campaign. Yet, neither of these two candidates have a significant social media buzz. They get out-trended by newcomers like Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann as fickle political consumers try to learn more about these relatively unknown candidates. No one is benefiting more than anyone else from social media. No one sticks out. Their bland online presence reaffirms the guffaws of the pundits who say that no one is presidential in this mix of candidates.  

So what should they be doing differently? As politicians seeking support, donations, and eventual votes, they should be seeking out communities with their marketing strategies. How do they draw in those communities? Do ANYTHING exceptional in the social sphere. Right now, each of the candidates’ social media campaigns looks more or less the same, regular tweets to ads or articles promoting them or bashing their opponent. If just one person was willing to go outside the box and hold a contest, a big event, launch a webinar or video series worth following, anything worth following, they would draw the online political community in by storm. But if each campaign continues to be just as cookie-cutter as the next in their social media usage, the incredible potential benefits of social media in the realm of political mobilization will remain an unexciting wash.


The consumer market has just started to figure out that Social Media is the future of marketing, that the capacity for conversation and expansion of ideas using these tools is nearly endless. How much more so should our politicians see the opportunity to communicate with and mobilize their supporters? Any GOP candidate who has the tact and vision to see this trend of the modern tech-driven world deserves and has earned the support and media attention that will no doubt accompany a savvy, interesting, and compelling social media political campaign. Any maybe they'll even become the next President of the United States.

J. Ben Battaglia is an Integrated Marketing and Communications Student at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism and has majors in Political Science and International Studies. He has worked on Capital Hill for Senator Mark Kirk and also has worked at Trilogy Interactive, a political marketing and web design company. He can be found on Twitter at @benbattaglia.