Challenge

After three months of lockdown in Malaysia, the public was still apprehensive in returning to the stores as sentiment were still cautious on public safety. adidas was poised with a challenge to launch their latest Originals flagship store in a time where consumers were tightening spend in lieu of the current pandemic. Besides, it is during the time of crisis that global brands like adidas must continue to lead the way as consumers look towards them for next trend ideas. 

DEX was tasked to create a compelling brand story that will help attract consumers back while engaging with physical spaces without cutting any corners on safety.

Solution

Prior to the launch of the new Originals store, adidas enlisted two artist - Jun Ong & Jaemy Choong - each to create unique installations in the store that will showcase the originality and cultural representations of Malaysia. Digital communications had to be weaved around this unique interpretation between brand / culture / art. Through this, we captured and created a story of how each installation was created with the goal of sharing its meaning to the people of Malaysia during a challenging moment. We ran teasers and pre-rolls on social platforms to establish some initial excitement on the upcoming stores and shared the symbolic meaning to the public.

With ROOTS PR as our partner, all safety precautions had to be met along with liaison and approval from the mall. With the store launch, we ran the video on YouTube in various formats targeted at specific times and audience behavior to achieve optimum ROI from the limited media budget available.

Impact

Within the first week of the official opening of the store, store performance exceeded expectations while media ROI were some of the highest we have achieved for adidas. The collaboration between Jun Ong and Jeamy Choong created a halo effect for adidas by showing how a global brand can in fact find local relevance through the right angle working hand-in-hand with stylistic partners. This is also a testament to how world class brands lead even in time of crisis in brand building and customer engagement - carefully designing and executing tactical ideas that yield results amidst the current headwinds.