EP. 152 The Secret Sauce Behind 300 Million Views: Lessons from Adidas

Adidas did something really cool here. And and it's not uncommon for people to brands like this to put out cooler commercials for the World Cup. But what was different about this commercial was that the product, the brand Adidas, was not the leading actor or actress. The leading actress or actor in this film was the storyline.

Sometimes we forget that a marketing campaign is supposed to control a narrative. What you're trying to do is push into the public consciousness a narrative around your product or brand. Brands are starting to recognize that when you're just throwing product in people's faces over and over again, Adidas has been around for so long. It's such a legacy trusted brand that they no longer need to be saying this is how good we are.

Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. With me as always, is Mark Goldhart, my co-host, business partner, confidant. Yep, yep, yep.

Friend? Friend. Thanks. What's up?

How are you? Close friend. Yeah. Can't complain.

Um, you are wearing pants and a long sleeve shirt on the hottest day of the year. I run cold. You do run cold. That is something I've learned about you.

I have a very low heart rate. Is that what does that? I don't know, but I do. My wife's very similar.

So I think it's a little colder. Yeah, I can wear sweatshirts during the summer and be fine. But I'm not like I don't know, I don't feel like I get overly cold in the winter either. Alright.

Uh well. Spe we'll just jumping right into it. I mean, this is I'm not even going through pleasantries, I guess, but since we talked about the cold. Um current state of like what's going on in e-commerce right now.

So a lot of things happening in e-commerce, tons of changes right now in meta. Um a lot of AI stuff coming out. But one thing that I think is is an important thing to mention because those little AI things are always gonna be coming out, and we're you know, like some of them are gonna work really well, other things are not. Um that doesn't really change how there's always something coming out in in the meta space.

Um, some, like I said, work better than others, but it just feels like it's happening a lot more frequently now, recently. Um But what I wanna what I think we wanted to talk about today is um one of those more macro things that's happening, which is we got summer. Like my kids get out of school uh in a week and a half. So which means they have like seven days left of school, like school days left.

So what does that mean to be a kid for brands? If you have a brand, if you are a brand that markets to women um of younger children, what yeah, this is a slower month oftentimes. The the summer becomes a slower time frame. Um so it's important to set good expectations.

You see slump summer lulls for two reasons. Number one is kids are at home, so moms are not able to just naturally be on their phones shopping um due to the demand of children. Yeah, it's just the routines are are mixed up. Routines change.

There is no routine. Because even, you know, for working women who have kids, like they're still going to their job. But for sure, but they have now have to get there's summer camps and there's you know, they have to figure out what's going on with their kids all day or whatever. So a good way to to know if if the summer I mean, A, you can just look at your historical data if for summer, but also if you're the kind of brand that dips on and this goes for men too, by the way.

If it you're the kind of brand that dips Friday, Saturday, and then you see like a little bit of a spike Sunday evening, and then your weekdays are strong. You're probably one of those. You're probably in like the family realm. Or or like over spring break time.

Like if you see things dip over spring break time or fall break or you know, things we're doing. We see this with men's brands too. It's not necessarily only moms or women. Sure.

Uh there's some men's brands where it's like if people are out doing stuff, they're not shopping as much. Totally. And the summer people tend to be out doing stuff more often. They're on vacations, they're swimming in the pool, they're taking more time off.

Yep. So be aware of it. Set proper expectations. Um, that doesn't always mean you decrease your ad spend, but it just it just means to set proper expectations.

I see a lot of people who will uh don't be surprised. They'll be scaling all year and they'll continue to put that ad spend in and they'll start to see their efficiencies dip significantly, and they might be spending 20% more to do the exact same. Um, which oftentimes is a good strategy if you have the margins for it, but some people aren't thinking through it. I think it's a good I mean my my hot take is that's a good strategy depending on what how quickly you can expect a second purchase.

For sure. Yeah. Obviously there's yeah, but so your profit margin for sure, but ultimately it's always worth it to get new customers, assuming you're still profitable, maybe less profitable during the summer. But if you're expecting a second purchase by Q4, then you definitely don't want to slow down because you're gonna cut your thing.

Look at your in in Shopify, look at your cohort data and see if June, July, August time frames, mainly more June, July, like are they are those people who buy it June and July more prone to buy in November, December? And if the answer is yes, um and you have the margins for it, then yeah, you probably don't want to slow down. But I think the pro the the the messages set proper expectations. Understand if you are one of those summer low brands and pre-respect lower efficiencies.

Yep. Don't freak out. Uh it doesn't mean you should stop spending. And you it might be too late for this as you're hearing this podcast, but um create some cool campaigns around the summer to get people more interested.

Maybe you're running that buy one, get one, 50% off campaign. Maybe you're running a summer package if you're a subscription-based business. Um but yeah, think think through that. Or a cool branding campaign.

Yeah, yeah. Or yeah, uh it's uh collaboration. That's you might be able to do that. What Adidas just did.

Yeah, speaking of, Adidas just did something for the summer, the FIFA World Cup. Um so what Adidas just did was they launched a five-minute commercial on social media through Timothy Chalamet's Instagram, I think it was. Because I don't think he's active on TikTok when I was looking at it. Through Timothe's uh socials.

Yeah. Um it's a five five-minute commercial between uh him and Adidas, and it's got cameos of Messi, Beckham, Bad Bunny. Um, those are like the three biggest from like a culturally reference or and then there's tons of like so there's there's several Trinity Rodman, several active soccer players. You probably know their names better than me.

Uh, because I'm not a big soccer, aka football guy. Um but there's there's I want to say like 10 to 12 cameos of of Adidas athletes, like famous people. I'm trying to look up that one kid, that 18-year-old Phenom from Barcelona. But yeah.

But it's really cool because Timothy Chalamy, he acts as like uh his Marty Supreme character. He's he's essentially a uh he's essentially a uh soccer bookie or like a soccer, no soccer manager, like team manager. Um really, really cool. Uh we'll probably show some overlays of this, but go look it up.

We're not gonna show the full five-minute commercial, but but the reason why we wanted to bring up this commercial was um Adidas did something really cool here. Um and and it's not uncommon for people to brands like this to put out cooler commercials for the World Cup. Like it it happens almost every year. But what was different about this commercial was that the product, the brand Adidas, was not the leading actor or actress, right?

The leading actress or actor in this film, the short film, was the storyline. They made up and invented a storyline. They said it was based on true events. I don't think.

Yeah, it just was like it was just like a street soccer legend of this team who hasn't lost in like 20 years. This three-on-three team who hasn't lost in like 20 years, and they've gone against the best of the world back. At their home court. Yes.

And and Timothy Chalamet is the narrator. But but that what was so cool is I think what's happening in we we talk about this all the time, and so we're not gonna make the whole podcast about this, but what's really cool right now, and what's happening is brands are starting to recognize that when you're just throwing product in people's faces over and over again, here are the best soccer cleats in the world. Like, no one needs to no one Adidas has been around for so long, it's such a legacy trusted brand that they no longer need to be saying this is how good we are.

We have this type of cleat, these type of insoles, these type of laces, this type of leather, this whatever whatever. All the marathon record breakers were wearing Adidas recently. Really? Like, they just don't need it.

And so Nike ran the campaign to try to go to beat the two hour mark. Oh, did they? Yeah, they ran a big campaign around it, but all the runners were wearing Adidas. Interesting.

But anyways, like it's just it's a story. Like, they just invented a story that caught attention, and as of like two days ago when I created a piece of content around this, they had done between just between Adidas and Timothy Chalamet socials, it it had almost 300 million views across the board. And that was, I think, as of like Monday. And today's what, the 12th?

So that was as of yesterday, which is the 11th. It's a lot of views. And it's and that's not including all the people like us who are talking about it, and you know, other people who are reposting it. And I mean, I I I can almost guarantee you it's probably double that when you think of all the other news, media, and other outlets that are showing things like that.

Yep. So But really impressive. But what it does is I think it brings to mind a traditional marketing campaign. So a lot of times in e-commerce, I think when we talk marketing campaigns, it's around events or deals or whatever.

Yeah. Didas is doing this partly because they're prepping for the World Cup. Sure. And they're trying to get their name in there as well.

I don't know if they're one of the main sponsors or not. I'm not sure what the sponsorships look like for the World Cup, but um I think sometimes we forget that a marketing campaign is supposed to control a narrative. What you're trying to do is push into the public consciousness a narrative around your product or brand. Yeah.

So what is the narrative that they're trying to push? Like legacy and the best. The best in the world, right? You've got Beckham, you've got Messi, you got Timothy Chalamet, who right now is arguably the most popular male actor.

Is there anybody right now in the news? No. No one. Right?

No. I mean, he's the rising star. Yes. So it's like, to me, that's what I would say.

It's like it's this like legacy meets the best in the world. Yeah. Is that what you were going for? Or did you say something else?

I I mean, I don't know exactly what it is. It's like it's clearly. I mean, if I was to distill it, I would just say like we are cool. Yeah.

Like we're the cool ones now. Yeah. Like we have Messi, we have Chalamet, we have this these, you know, these younger guys. Now it is soccer.

Bad Bunny as well, he's like the rising artist. Yeah, Bad Bunny was in there. So that's how I would interpret it is like we're the cool ones. Yeah.

Whereas Nike is the case. Yeah, like Nike's kind of had the reins ever since Jordan. From a coolness perspective, exactly. But you have kind of noticed with Nike, it seems like I used to have a lot of Nike stuff, and I can't remember the last time I bought something Nike.

Yeah, I don't like I really I I don't know. Like I just bought new balances over like what I would typically buy, some like Nike sneakers. Unless it's because you're a dad now. I've been a dad for 13 years.

Hard to say that's a hard to say that's a brand a brand shoes decision. These are technically basketball shoes. Did you know that? That's what they fall under is the basketball category.

Would you ever wear these playing basketball? No. Yeah. I wouldn't.

I actually got these because I got them in golf shoes. They made like a golf, like a they were like a golf collab with Malvin Golf. And they were the most comfortable golf shoes. Really?

And then I said I want to wear those just regular. So that's that's what I would say if you're distilling it like maybe. I mean, maybe we should do the research, but I'm I'm assuming Adidas is smelling blood in the water, and they decided this is our moment to take a bigger campaign initiative with some big names and swing big and put our name out there and prep ourselves for the World Cup where there's gonna be a lot of people watching soccer around the world. And I think sometimes people interpret it as either or.

Now it's easier to do volume with ugly ads and less volume or quality. Volume or quality, yeah. But in reality, we get it. We're not all Adidas, like we can't get Timothy Chalamet.

You're not gonna go get Timothy Chalamet tomorrow. Trinity Rodman, yeah. But that doesn't mean you can't do a marketing campaign around whatever the narrative that you're trying to tell around your brand. Sure.

And do it in a good way that could live a little longer than one UGC. 100%. Yeah. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't do UGC.

Two things can be true. Yes. Two things can be the right call. Yes.

Right? You can have these more organic-y feeling brand message style, story-driven pieces of content that catch people's attention and make them want to view what make them want to be entertained more than oh, I want to shop. I mean, just to get just to give you an idea, and then I want to jump into this quantity side of things too, is uh because you sent me a cool tweet that I want to read over the weekend. You sent me something that was important, but um if you were to at 300 million views, if you were to break that down to the cost per like how much you would have paid paid to get those impressions from an ad perspective, you're probably like an average CPM of what $15 to $16 right now.

If we were to distill all of our clients. Yeah, but that's what it would be. Like, so you're talking about probably $4.5 to $4.

8 million in ad spend. No, obviously they spent probably significantly more than that to produce that video when you're paying all of those athletes. I don't I don't know. Maybe not actually because they're athletes and maybe that's what they're required to do.

Right? Yeah, like I they're already paying a lot of those athletes, so like I don't know how how it all works. Like, I don't know how you would compare that to a regular e-com brand. That's a good question, yeah.

Because you know, Messi's already on the payroll. Yeah. Well, all of them are probably besides. Besides Bad Bunny and Chalamet, I would imagine.

What else do they have to do on it? Like their what what are their contractual obligations? Like you have to jump on and then add Timothy Chalamet. I didn't know he was part of Adidas, so that's new.

Yeah, maybe he's not. Maybe they just hired him. But I don't think, I mean, I don't know, what does he make for a movie? It's not gonna be that much, right?

No. But nonetheless, like that that that's crazy, right? That they were able to drive that through storytelling. And I'm sure some of those impressions were paid impressions.

I haven't it's hard to know how much, but um, but anyway, so like let's let's talk about this like quantity over quality. So there's this quantity piece which is store or quality piece, which is storytelling. Like, that's at the end of the day, like what you can distill that down to. But there's also this quantity piece that I think um get too caught up in thinking that the quantity will ruin the quality.

Is that a good way to say it? Yes. Yeah. So let me read this tweet.

Mark, so Mark forwarded me this tweet that uh Northbeam uh tweeted out. We'll give a little shout out to North Beam um on the fourth. So Northbeam, just by the way, is like a it's a it's an attribution, third-party attribution tool for e-commerce businesses. Good company, good people who run that over there.

But anyways, they said in Q1, our top 25% performing companies launched launched 189 ads per week. The remaining 75% launched 83. Top performing companies doesn't. Also caveat here, Northbeam works with bigger e-commerce brands.

They focus on uh Yeah, they're probably eight and nine figure companies. Higher eight, nine figure companies. Whereas Triple Well is gonna be in the sevens and eights, and I'm sure there's plenty of there's nine figures, yeah, yeah. But but most that's kind of where they so just to give you an idea, like if you're a smaller brand in the five to five million to twenty, thirty million range.

I don't know if those stats really are gonna line up for you exactly. Just to just to put some a little salt on that. Yeah, if you're spending fifty thousand dollars a month versus a hundred or a million dollars a month, th this is very different. This is very different, right?

But the point that that I think we're trying to make and what we want to talk about is no matter where you're at, and no matter how much lower you are in ad spend than what a bigger brand is, like a hundred million dollar brand is spending, you're probably not uploading enough ads. Yes? Is that the point here? Yes, and there's some hot takes in the Twitter sphere around this, but yes.

Like just a debate around how many ads you actually need versus not need. Yeah. And do you really need that many ads versus not? Um look, I would lean, I tend to believe I'm an agnostic with a lot of these debates, because I think it just depends.

But I would lean on velocity. And the reason why I'm leaning towards velocity is because you and I have talked about it before, but it's the concept of the death of the author, right? Which is if you went to school, I guess, I mean, I think they teach it in high school, but once an author releases a story or an artist releases something, like the the subjectivity of that piece and the meaning behind it is out of their control now. Like how it is interpreted by the audience can be different.

Like this actually happened if I mean Dune is a big movie now, like I mean series, like the third one I think is released this year. Um, speaking of Chalamet. But originally, Dune wasn't supposed to make Paul Atreides a hero. That wasn't the intent.

Okay. And so the author was like, I need to make sure people know that he's not the hero. But it's kind of hard because you made him really cool. Sure.

But he's, you know, so this you know what this reminds me of? Okay, I just saw this because I think it's a funny break. We Newgirl. Nick, who's one of the characters in New Girl, he writes uh he he always considers himself an author and eventually publishes his book.

Called the Pepperwood Chronicles. And it's supposed to be like this tough man, like not spy novel, but like tough man gruff novel. And it ends up being like a preteen book. Yes.

And that's what makes him like super famous. That's what this reminds me of. He's like this like super gruff guy. That's exactly what it is.

Yes. Hey guys, done. I'm Julius Pepperwood. So the point being is once you release content, which is a form of expression and art, you don't really know.

Yeah. You know, like so the reason why I would lean velocity is because A, ch tastes are changing so rapidly because of social media. Attention spans have shrunk because of social media. Um trends are changing.

I mean, what, like every two weeks there's a new TikTok trend or whatever. Daily. So how people consume content is not the same as they consumed 10 years ago at all. It's totally distorted.

So if you lean velocity, you are reducing your your risk of fatigue and just not connecting because you're you're making these assumptions based off of whatever historical data you have that might not just be relevant anymore. Sure. So it's like, oh, we can release this, this, this, and this. Yeah.

It's like maybe. Yeah. Like, you know, your traditional marketing campaigns, like we just talked about, like, I think they're still relevant and you should do that. Like, you should try to push some kind of narrative or something around your brand that makes you unique and tells your story and all of that.

But at the same time, like you need social proof and you need a lot of other faces talking about you. You need to connect with a wide variety of people, and those niches on the internet are becoming a little bit more siloed. Yeah. And you can't really just expect to throw a commercial out there and reach everybody.

Well, it's not just velocity, but it's also diversification too. Yep. Right? With velocity oftentimes comes diversification in ad diversification.

I'm not just saying like, you know, uh diversity in human beings on sizes and colors and all that kind of stuff, but it's more like UGC versus a social proof static ad versus a very polished brand campaign versus a you know, like the algorithm just naturally does better when you give it more diversification to sort through to. And and part of that diversity is with velocity, you get more diversity of character. Yeah. So the characters that are a part of your ad for sure game plan, you're gonna have a lot more of those characters, or you can hone in on the ones that are working best, and then you can do different kinds of concepts and hooks and and so forth.

So long way of saying I lean velocity. Yeah. And I always will because of the game has changed. Like we don't live in 2018 anymore.

Yeah. Well, and it's not just you lean it, and I know you're an expert media buyer, but it's not just that. Like, there's also brands like we've we've brought these brands up before, Comfort. Um, so comfort is a brand that two years ago was doing a hundred million dollars.

Last year they did five hundred million dollars. This year they're doing a billion dollars. Um in four years of being alive, they're doing a billion dollars. I don't know if anyone's ever done that before.

Like, I really don't I I can't. Yes, on the consumer side. I don't I can't think of a single brand. I guess Groons would be up there.

I don't think so. Maybe they sold, I guess, for a billion dollars. But are they doing a billion? I don't think so.

These guys are actually doing a billion dollars in sales, and if you go and look at their ad library in Meta, you will see some of the most gorgeous creative, some of the most on-brand creative, and you will also see some of the ugliest creative you would have thought. Like you would have never thought they would publish. But they do it because they know that the diversification works. Yeah.

Right. Here's my thought. Like as a as somebody who like I I know we we run a m we run an ad agency where we don't do a lot of organic for people. Like we help people consult on the organic side of things, but we actually run the ads, like that's what we actually execute on.

So we we're very opinionated on organic. We don't execute and do those things for people, but as somebody who creates content, one thing that I have kind of learned is that the performance side should be velocity, right? And there should be and and it's not just velocity and you make things ugly always. It's not just velocity and you don't make sure your product looks right and is demonstrated right.

It's not just velocity where 90% of the ad is somebody else's brand and 10% is yours. The pushback I'd give there though is you don't know what is the right way to show your product. Sure. You think you do, but like again, that's why velocity matters.

What I mean is like, let's say it's a video of somebody um for poppy or olipop, and you're never seeing the can, and all you're seeing is somebody drinking or something like that, and you have no idea that it's olipop. You're right in the sense that it could be. I I'm just meaning like, sure, get the product in there. You you're right.

You don't know what from a is it is it gonna work better like this, or is it gonna work better if it's poured in a clear cup? I I don't know, right? But the point I'm saying is velocity here and I like the storytelling brand kind of concept on the organic side. I used to be personally be a big velocity guy on organic, and I'm a lot less that way.

Like I like this idea of brands doing the quality over quantity, and when I use the term quality, I don't mean like what Adidas just did with the big time actors and the fact that they made it look like an actual Netflix documentary. I'm not saying that from a quantity, I'm saying quant quality of idea. For sure. Well you want you want the message, yes, whatever the in-house experience is.

Yes, exactly. Because because there is just so much velocity out there on the organic side right now, between the creator economy, velocity, like in my early days, I used to just upload like three videos a day and it helped me grow like crazy. Now, if I do that, the algorithm, it actually hurts me. Yeah, most people are following the herd.

Yeah, so the more the more I focus on, you know, for every one idea that I post, I thought of like four crappy ones, and for every like five or six ideas that I actually posted that I thought were good quality, one of them does well. You know? Right. And that's kind of where I'm that that's my thought.

Like well, I think again, the way the way to think about this is like when you're doing ads, we we think of social media ads like traditional advertising and it's just not. A lot of what you're doing with social media ads is being top of mind and presenting it in a way that makes people think that all the cool people, or just people in general, like they're just seeing it a lot. I'm seeing you everywhere. Oh, this is a good brand.

This is valid. This is you know, they're they're just associating you with truth and coolness and whatever. Yeah, you saw that comfort did that really well. The same way, like back in the day, people started buying Nike the more people bought Nike or Adidas back in the day, like in the 90s before social media, just because hey, I went to school and I saw five kids wearing Nike now.

Oh, that's the cool one. I want to do that too. It's not because those five kids were the coolest kids necessarily. And it was on the cover East Bay magazine.

You remember East Bay magazine? Yeah, East Bay magazine, you know. Um Nike couldn't control who was wearing their shoes at school. Yeah.

And nor did they care. They were just controlling the in-house experience. Like, hey, once you come to our store or once you get our product, this is the experience. Yeah.

And same thing, like your organic is that more controlled, yeah. When they come to your house, what do you want them to see? Yes. Yeah, when you go on a date with somebody, how are you acting?

Right. How do you want how do you want what do you want them to know about you? What pleasant surprises do they do you want them to experience once they come and see your place? Like, oh, I didn't know that about you.

Sure. Right? Like it's his house is very meticulous. Yeah.

He must be OCD, you know, or he's really messy, baby. He doesn't care, you know, like there's layers of a brand experience, and and I think sometimes we get caught up in trying to front load that brand experience when it's like, well, they have to have a a reason to care about your brand at all. Yeah. Get their attention a little bit and then they'll jump in and see what you're doing.

Yeah, like once you catch their attention, then you can start controlling it. And listen, in a perfect world, you can control it from the organic place first. I mean, in a perfect world, you like if organic, your organic strategy is so good and you're getting reach like nobody else's business, and then the next point is an ad. Like, that's awesome if you can do that.

Most brands just don't sit in that world anymore. Yeah, that's awesome. I just don't think it's realistic at all. And it's not something that you can repeat.

No, not even more than that. Even going back to the comfort example. Like a comfort's example is seating. They manufactured social proof and reach at the highest levels to the point that like even as a marketer.

I would consider that a performance marketing type expense. Like, that's not organic. A hundred percent. Now it's the flywheel's turning now, and I'm sure a lot of it is organic.

Yes. But with their seating strategy, there no, like that's not it's crazy. Like, even as a marketer who can identify those things, I remember like four or five different times being on their website almost buying a hoodie. Because I'm like, I'm seeing this everywhere.

Do I just need to try it out to see how good it is? Yeah, they force their way into being cool. Right now I'm in the same boat with IM8 Health. Have you heard of IM8?

Yeah. I'm in the same boat. I actually like I have a vitamin supplement world that is is tailored to me. My wife and my mother-in-law are very into this kind of stuff.

I do not need any more vitamins and supplements. Yet IM8 Health is in my face what feels like 24-7, to the point where I'm like, I don't know, man. This stuff seems like it might be a good idea for me to try. Maybe this is different.

That's not. I mean, but maybe David Beckham uses it. And so does Ariana Sabalanka, who's the number one tennis player in the world. Like, so it's good marketing and it works.

Like, so if it's working on people like us who are marketers, um it says something. But reach and attention, that's all it is, guys. Yeah, very good point. Very good point.

So you're just trying to get reach and attention. Yeah. I think that uh Adidas did a great job at getting attention and reach on their organic, and I'm sure that they have an insane amount of ads running at the same time. Well, that's all I have to say about that.

I'm excited for summer. Hope everyone is. Hope everyone's doing something fun this year. Set expectations, understand what you're doing, what your business should and shouldn't be doing in the summer.

Um what else? Have fun. Be safe. Enjoy your kids at home.

Don't go too crazy. And we'll see you guys next week. Thank you for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. If there's a brand campaign, strategy, or marketing tactic that you want us to review, please DM me at TrevorCrump on Instagram or TikTok or at the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast.

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