Adidas Video Hacking

The thesis project

IED Firenze usually invites its students to carry out a thesis project in collaboration with companies that turn to the institute in search of ideas to enrich and innovate their communication or the design of their services and spaces.

For our PTP training program in Web Design, the 2018 proposal came from Adidas.

Adidas: Here to Create

In an introductory brief (via videoconference from Nuremberg), some of the Adidas marketing managers summarized the characteristics of the target audience, the storytelling behind the current campaigns, the activities undertaken so far, and the main objectives of the upcoming communication initiatives.

We students were given the task of developing an innovative proposal that could be integrated into their strategy.

Call the Creators

Adidas communication campaigns target Creators: young people of the so-called Generation Z who want to express themselves, participate, modify, and create their own uniqueness.

Their first goal is to engage, offering an entertainment or shopping experience that strengthens the sense of belonging to the Adidas community.

They are also looking for proposals aimed at reducing the gap between the experience in the physical store and online communication, also as a counterweight to the dominance of Amazon's anonymous, all-encompassing shopping.

Together with my teammates (Lorenzo Cini, Davide De Bartolomeo and Michele Martelli), after a phase of analysis, brainstorming and research, we decided to go for an unusual project…

Adidas Video Hacking

We found our main inspiration in a web project: The Johnny Cash Project. In this online portal (now replaced by a case study, since the initiative has ended), visitors could customize individual frames of the video of Ain't No Grave by Johnny Cash, redrawing them and creating a collective work in constant motion.

This idea of providing a tool and letting the public express themselves by modifying existing media seemed to us in line with the concepts of hacking and creation promoted by Adidas.

We wanted Adidas, which had already experimented with product customization, to offer a hacking experience for a brand communication video, integrated with social networks.

The idea of Adidas Video Hacking is to create a web portal where users can customize the individual frames of a promotional video, giving life to the collective work.

But this wasn't enough for us… we wanted our experience to be usable in-store, in an even more engaging way, so we decided to pair the portal with a physical interface.

Graffiti artists are the hackers of urban space

In the store, an installation made of a panel and a fake spray can (actually an infrared pointer) will let visitors customize the video frames as if they were a wall to draw graffiti on.

The portal will be just like the one available online, but with a dedicated interface that puts the user in the mood of urban hacking, together with Adidas!

From the pitch to the prototype

During the project pitch, the Adidas marketing and R&D managers were very interested in our idea! They asked us to build a prototype representative of the user experience and to highlight any potential issues, proposing solutions.

The first step was developing the software to create custom frames and generate the video from them.

We designed and then implemented a simple and direct interface, letting users try their hand at creating right away. Some design choices came from the need to make the process intuitive, others from the need to work around technological limitations and optimize performance.

Satisfied with the result, we moved on to the next step: building the "spray can" pointing system.

After experimenting with remote controls, lasers, webcams and various kinds of projectors, we settled on the components we needed and got everything ready.

Driven by the desire to prove our idea (and by the worry that something might go wrong), with a good dose of DIY, we built an installation that wasn't pretty to look at, but worked wonders!

After the final adjustments, calibrations and tests, we were ready for the grand finale!

Presenting the project

We presented the project to the Adidas marketing and R&D managers, walking them through the initial analysis phase and the research and work that shaped the prototype.

Here is the sample video we brought: taken from Adidas promotional material and edited through the app by me and the other members of the group.

The moment of greatest satisfaction (and apprehension) came when, as planned, we invited our audience to try the installation firsthand.

It was a success! We managed to communicate every aspect clearly and propose further developments, and we were complimented for delivering a complete prototype that did justice to our original intent.