CREATIVE SHOWCASE 
Creative Showcase: MySpace + World Cup
June 15, 2006
Explore Carat Fusion’s MySpace page for adidas-- enter the “impossible goal” contest, or read the exclusive blogs written by players and sports commentators.
Creative Notes 
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Campaign Details
Client: adidas
Creative Agency: Carat Fusion
Creative Agency: Carat Fusion
Campaign Insight
Our challenge with this campaign was to build awareness, excitement and buzz around adidas' involvement with the World Cup. Knowing that the core youth audience is very aware of overly overt marketing efforts, we wanted to design an interactive experience that appealed to the interests of the community, while showcasing adidas as the leader in soccer-related activity. We also built upon the "+10" concept adidas created around the World Cup.
Our solution was to create a dynamic promotion with social networking site MySpace.com in order to attract and engage a youth audience worldwide. We designed the site to showcase adidas' dynamic roster of players, while engaging the community and allowing them to interact with the brand. For example, the site features a Player Carousel, which is an interactive way to serve up the adidas players and key profile information. We also developed an Impossible Goal Sweepstakes allowing users to generate their own content and feel a part of the adidas family. Plus, we incorporated exclusive blogs written by players and sports commentators.
Within the first week it went live, we were thrilled to see the response from the MySpace community. It was great to see how people were responding to the site by posting comments, linking to friends, and interacting with it.
-- Katie Gallagher, account director, Carat Fusion
Editor's Note
Creative Showcase is meant to be a teaching tool and an inspiration for our readers. We comment only on creative that we really love. Our panelists discuss what makes it great, but if they feel there were missed opportunities that would have made it better, we invite them to mention those. And finally, we seek out a wide range of opinions that reflect the marketplace for the panel, in order to provide constructive, useable feedback for agencies, clients and others involved in these creative pieces.
The Panel
Nice job by Carat, adidas and MySpace of blending overt marketing with content distribution and user-generated content. The strength of the adidas brand and the open-ended nature of its "+10" campaign lends itself very well to this kind of grassroots effort, and it's good to see they didn't cut any corners. Carat really nailed every buzz topic related to new media these days: video shot exclusively for web, asset downloads, UGC video sweepstakes, blogs, integrating meaningfully with the MySpace community. (There's almost too much stuff to play around with!) I will be especially interested to see what comes of the +10 Ad Builder; will diehard adidas fans create a positive, viral movement for the brand? That would be the ultimate measure of success for this brave effort.
-- Jon Verna, media supervisor, Black Bag Advertising
From the well-designed Flash animated roster of players and their profile information and the "Impossible Goal Sweepstakes" allowing users to upload their own videos, to the blogs written by players and sports commentators, the site has everything a real soccer fan could ask for.
To me, the site is more about the celebration of soccer than about the brand. Should there be more emphasis on the brand?
I honestly don't think so. Soccer fans all over the world know about the "three stripes," and it actually feels like a relief that the adidas logo is not plastered all over the place, but actually focuses on content and user experience.
To top it all off, the site's design is very clean and the videos load instantly.
Great job!
-- Mike Geiger, department head, interactive production, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
There's a lot to love about this site; it's another great example of Carat's work for adidas. Here, the interface is elegant and there's a profound wealth of content, with the actual ad for adidas prominent but tasteful. The rotating cast of characters on the home page was nicely done.
I must confess that I found it difficult to understand where Pablo Mastroeni's voice was coming from when the site finally loaded, and had to scroll vertically up and down in an awkward way to see where he was.
The biggest thing I have to say about this site is that it's a work in progress... it will be illuminating to watch it grow as World Cup fever ignites and eventually boils over.
-- Brad Berens, executive editor, iMedia
-- Jon Verna, media supervisor, Black Bag Advertising
From the well-designed Flash animated roster of players and their profile information and the "Impossible Goal Sweepstakes" allowing users to upload their own videos, to the blogs written by players and sports commentators, the site has everything a real soccer fan could ask for.
To me, the site is more about the celebration of soccer than about the brand. Should there be more emphasis on the brand?
I honestly don't think so. Soccer fans all over the world know about the "three stripes," and it actually feels like a relief that the adidas logo is not plastered all over the place, but actually focuses on content and user experience.
To top it all off, the site's design is very clean and the videos load instantly.
Great job!
-- Mike Geiger, department head, interactive production, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners
There's a lot to love about this site; it's another great example of Carat's work for adidas. Here, the interface is elegant and there's a profound wealth of content, with the actual ad for adidas prominent but tasteful. The rotating cast of characters on the home page was nicely done.
I must confess that I found it difficult to understand where Pablo Mastroeni's voice was coming from when the site finally loaded, and had to scroll vertically up and down in an awkward way to see where he was.
The biggest thing I have to say about this site is that it's a work in progress... it will be illuminating to watch it grow as World Cup fever ignites and eventually boils over.
-- Brad Berens, executive editor, iMedia
Footnote:
Submissions are judged by a panel of industry experts from and based on the following criteria: how the creative captures the specific customer; how it meets the brand's business needs; impact of execution; and creativity. If you would like your creative considered for Creative Showcase, send an email to creative@imediaconnection.com.